Now I am setting out into the unknown. It will take me a long while to work through the grief. There are no shortcuts; it has to be gone through.

It was a dark and stormy night.

In reading we must become creators. Once the child has learned to read alone, and can pick up a book without illustrations, he must become a creator, imagining the setting of the story, visualizing the characters, seeing facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voices. The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words.

I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day. . . . The most difficult thing to let go is my self, that self which, coddled and cozened, becomes smaller as it becomes heavier. I don't understand how and why I come to be only as I lose myself, but I know from long experience that this is so.

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

I knew that the moment I started worrying about whether or not I was good enough for the job, I wouldn't be able to do it.

You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children