I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man.