I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn’t handle that business then there were no privileges.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

I think people take me as seriously as I want them to. They take me as seriously as I take myself – let’s put it that way.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Alas! You complain that your soul is out of tune. Then ask the Master to tune the heart-strings.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say ‚oral method‘ to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say ‚sign language‘ to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

I’d rather be a victor than a victim.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.

It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

Accountability breeds response-ability.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

The only shame is to have none.

Sadly, I do my homework. I’ve a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I’ll read C. Fred Bergsten’s defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It’s embarrassing to admit.

A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Every man is his own hell.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

I don’t do research. I never have.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

Most of us believe, or should believe, that every child can learn, given the opportunity, but try substitute teaching just once and you will see firsthand the socioeconomic issues that distract our kids from taking advantage of that opportunity.

When I write, I tend to twist my hair. Something for my small mind to do, I guess.