Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.

If someone's different from you and it scares you or makes you mad, that's God telling you to take a closer look. If you're scared or mad, that's about you, not about the person who scares you or angers you.

So you didn’t tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . .” “Because experience is the only teacher,” Hey-Soos says. “Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don’t listen to their parents, or people don’t leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There’s only one thing that’s universal.” “What’s that?” “The truth.

I believe there was a big bang and that because of that we are all connected into infinity, and I know very little having to do with human beings that doesn't also have to do with connection.

I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common. There was such a revelation in knowing that a story could be told like that.

Something about the joy and pain of that moment, something about the excruciating contrast, made me feel that no matter what happens now, my life has been worth it. What a ride.

It seems to me if you don't know anything about child development you shouldn't intimate in your "reporting" that you do.