Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

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

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you.

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.

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.