Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.

Long before I was a success, my parents made me feel like I could be one.

...a habit that had become one of those necessary things for the night... surely a body-friendly if not familiar-lying next to you. Someone whose touch is a reassurance, not an affront or a nuissance. Whose heavy breathing neither enrages nor discusts you, but amuses you like that of a cherished pet.

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.