I think it's difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They're embarrassed to have people see them doing it.

And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can't read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they're not going to be able to make it in our society.

Each of us is born with a history already in place

It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.

We all think we're different, but when it comes around, we end up needing the same things. Somebody to love us. Somebody to respect us.

The movie is more real in so many ways than the life I am leading. No, that’s not true. I just desperately wish this was only a movie.

But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy.