As a matter of record, New York City spends a higher portion of its budget on instruction and associated costs within the schools themselves than any of the other 100 largest districts in the nation.

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

You need massive recruitment to tell the poorest of the poor what is possible.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.

The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations - 'state indoctrination.'

False hope is worse than despair.

The cause of homelessness is lack of housing.

Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States.

The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory.

If you see only goodness in people, then people will be good.

People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, ..., and he had very red hair.

The incarnation is not a soul into a body, it is an illusory world known as a life into consciousness.

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.

For me reading was always the great escape without getting your fingers burnt.

Sometimes words come out of me and I don't know where they come from or why. They're like falling stars tumbling through the universe; bright, burning things that can't be stopped.

The kinds of good friends I have are people who are perfectly willing to have me say I'll see them in six months, and live right next door.

I remain a fan of my friend Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho.' I think as a book about New York in the '80s it was pretty excellent.

The person sending ironic text messages has no idea that their voice does not sound so great in text. There's no dry sense of humor in a text. It comes off as a little bit shitty.

Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy.