That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.

What interests me is trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I'm interested in how ordinary people live their lives

That's when I feel most alive, he told me once on an airplane, when I'm helping people.

When writers stop believing in their own stories, readers tend to sense it.