It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

I have been mocked by beauty, too. But it was the beauty which cost me nothing that in the end turned upon me.

Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.

On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles.