Childhood is the small town everyone came from.

When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal.

When you're a little kid, your heart is open and tender and a harsh word can go straight in and become part of your life.

A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.

Vacation cruises are advertised as luxurious journeys to exotic places, but a chief pleasure is the reading of books ... . On steamer chairs topside or poolside, in the lounges, everywhere you see men and women with their noses in books, devouring them for hours.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.

Pumpkin pie is a living symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate wasn't all that much different from the worst pumpkin pie you ever ate.