Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.

A good teacher is one who helps you become who you feel yourself to be. A good teacher is also one who says something that you won't understand until 10 years later.

When I read students’ attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect.

To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?

I'm tired of thinking and I'm really tired of Feeling. —Jenna Richards

Faith is not something that one has; faith is something that one practices at the very moment in your life when you really don't believe anything, and you're in the worst kind of despair.

The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.