Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

When we are touched by something it's as if we're being brushed by an angel's wings.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.