The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

I think that my responsibility to my art is to try to get it right or to push the boundaries of what I'm able to do in any way.

A movement got started for common schools, and by the end of the 19th century, 91 percent of Americans could read and write.

If you read three books a day you couldn't read all the poetry that's being published.

I got interested in the question of literacy because writers are always moaning about why more people don't read books. They long for the good old days when people read serious novels.

When I came into the job, funding for the humanities at the federal level was being drastically cut. This was the high tide of the new Republican Congress.

When I was in college, I lost my scholarship one year. I had enough money for tuition, but not room and board. So I camped in the hills.