I woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter.

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

The question of identity is a question involving the most profound panic—a terror as primary as the nightmare of the mortal fall.

Bloodlust – the disease that makes us the monsters we are known to be

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

Photography seems to fix, but this is an illusion created by our short lives. A photograph is merely a note held for 200 years.

Anything that is within you is a gift. To be able to take possession of that and say, "Whatever it is, I am bigger than it," is to learn to cherish even the hard and painful things.

Insanity is coasting through life.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.

Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.