As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

I get really motivated when I put on the India jersey. It is a responsibility, so I want to perform in the best way I can.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

My kids are coming up in a different time then me. Interracial couples are of the norm. With me, it’s about making sure my kids understand the importance of education and having opportunities that I didn’t. My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I don’t go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, ‚Let’s see if I can get this done today.‘

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‚like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‚how‘ and ‚why‘ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

My mother taught children to love to dance.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

A lot of people have a sense-of-entitlement mentality that somebody else ought to do these things for them. People are mad at the government for not getting jobs for them. I don’t understand why it’s the government’s responsibility.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

No other country in the world does what we do. On every issue, the world turns to us, not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might – but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

No matter what happens on the field, getting an education makes you a winner.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

I wanted to write.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Life well spent is long.