The quote is in the post.

TV Tonight's More4 repeat of The West Wing was the vintage The U.S. Poet Laureate one aspect of which features Laura Dern giving a heartfelt performance as the titular bard, threatening not to appear at a White House dinner in her honour unless she's allowed to criticise the administration about not signing a landmine treaty it instigated. After some gentle coaxing from Toby, the poet changes her mind and delivers one of the best speeches I've heard in anything about what it is to be creative:

"There was a man in Banja Luka that I met. He took his son and I (pause) to go fishing in the Sava River. And the little boy hooked a piece of garbage and when he tried to take it off the line, it blew him up. Right in front of his father. And, right in front of me. . . . You think that I think that an artist's job is to speak the truth. An artist's job is to captivate you for however long as we've asked for your attention. If we stumble into truth, we got lucky, and I don't get to decide what truth is. . . . I write poetry, Toby. That's how I enter the world."