As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer.

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?

When I began to read, I began to exist

Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.

We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.

Reading is not optional.

I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.

We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

Think about all the tomorrows of your life.

We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct.

It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken

You can rely on a stick, but not on a faithless friend.

He would write and write. He would make wonderful things happen. Some of it would be true. All of it would be true. Most of it would be true.

Love is more than a word to me. It's something that I see and feel in the people around me that makes me believe it and feel loved. It's nurturing and unconditional. It is consistent and reliable.

A truly obedient man does not discriminate between one thing and another, since his only aim is to execute faithfully whatever may be assigned to him.

A lot of people are kind of depressed. I'm happy some of the time, and some of the time I'm not.

Pardon the way that I stare, there's nothing else to compare. The sight of you leaves me weak, there are no words left to speak.

My process is to be by myself when I record. It's quite an emotional performance to pull off when someone else is in the room. I prefer to go away and have my own time with it, bring it in later.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

I want to do work where I have something to say.

To become attached to the experience of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with God above sense and experience in the darkness of a pure and perfect love.