Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?

They take away your shoelaces and your belt so you can’t kill yourself no matter how bad it is. I guess making you live is part of the punishment.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken

As a kid I didn't see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn't do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons.

We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

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.