Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us.

Each of us will have to make the choices that allow us to be the largest versions of ourselves.

Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision.

But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.

I grew up in a dictatorship, where you couldn't talk about difficult situations - there was this culture of silence. We would run into a problem and have no one to talk to.

Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like.

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.