If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?

The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

Fire will burn any human body it touches, and starvation will waste it, but stories are not so predictable in their effects.

because we all know that the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don't even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean?

Be careful to make a good improvement of precious time.

The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.

Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.

Pay attention; don't let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

Most of these other negro leaders who are supposedly integrationists aren't that intelligent [like Reverend Galamison].

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

As a student, I don't have a lot of expenses. I buy food. I play a sport. But that's about it.

If anything, people think it's cool that I'm still working. I'm proud to be a working mama in this world.