Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.

Got an hour or two? That's all it takes for one of my books.

Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.

You're not going to get to college - you're not even going to be qualified, even to go to a community college, if you don't address the basic problem of literacy in America. And there's no reason - no reason - for us to have that problem.

Never tell a child that something it's too hard

People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does...And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.

She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me.