What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative

I always want to write something better than the last book.

What I like about non-fiction is that it covers such a huge territory. The best non-fiction is also creative

Curing yourself of obsessive compulsive disorder by going to a strip club is pretty strange.

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 problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia