As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted

Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.

War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health.

Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.

Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.

If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.

I think challenges are what any decent writer would be all about. If you actually do find your slide and grease it, shame on you. Me, I get bored very easily. As a writer I get bored even faster than I do in real life. I mean, I like fast cars; I've driven a lot of racecars. You need some stimulation. If I find something that seems too difficult to do, too difficult to research, or beyond your writing abilities, it's a perfect invitation to try it.