I urge you to be teachers so that you can join with children as the co-collaborators in a plot to build a little place of ecstasy and poetry and gentle joy

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.

Ever heard the tale of Neptune's Children?

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don't know.

I believe in the perfect outcome in every area of my life! Expect to be successful! Expect to win!

Be good to yourself 'cause nobody else has the power to make you happy.

To preach more than half an hour, a man should be an angel himself or have angels for hearers.

That's when the idea for Mad About the Boy arrived. It wasn't even a Bridget [Jones] story initially - then I realized I was writing in Bridget's voice and it grew from there into a Bridget novel.

Jamie' is what my mother gave me, and that takes the onus off of being big. Somebody thinks, 'Oh, Jamie - how threatening can he be?

Death doesn't just make all the world kin, it makes all religions one

New York's the lonesomest place in the world if you don't know anybody.

Find out where you are at, where you are going and build a plan to get there.