Teach the writer, not the writing.

Our job is to ask questions of children so that children internalize these questions and ask them of themselves and their own emerging drafts.

Writing well has everything to do with being able to read one's own work with an eye toward the unmet possibilities that are there.

Meanings come not from events themselves, but from what we bring to them.

Similarly, although we use prepositional phrases when we write, we apparently don't write more effectively when we can label our language in these ways.

I love mayonnaise. Every birthday when I was a kid I'd go to Black Angus and just dip my burger in mayo.

God never does anything according to what you want. It's never your will. It's His will.

There was certainly an old law code which stands behind the earliest form of Deuteronomy. Presumably that is what was lost.

For whoever meditates a crime is guilty of the deed. [Lat., Nam scelus intra se tacitum qui cogitat ullum, Facti crimen habet.]

I hate birthdays, .. It's more like a new starting point in New York. For me, it's an evolution. I don't celebrate the past. I like the present and tomorrow.

An idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis.

I keep telling my Tory colleagues: don't have any policies. A manifesto that has policies alienates people. In 1979 the manifesto said nothing which was brilliant.

Mistakes can't be erased, but they move you from your present position.

A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.

I wanted to be a filmmaker, actually, when I was in high school and college. But I just decided it would be more expensive to do, so I sort of decided music would be more fun.