Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do.

I realize, of course, that I wasn't born knowing how to read. I just can't imagine a time when I didn't know how.

One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in.

Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.