Like Scout and her father in To Kill a Mockingbird, my father would pull me onto his lap each night in our four-room apartment and read aloud.

The more you read, the better you get, the more better you get, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.

Students who read the most also read the best, achieve the most, and stay in school the longest. Conversely, those who dont read much cannot get better at it.

Readers don't grow in trees. But they are grown-in places where they are fertilized with lots of print, and above all, read to daily.

Every time we read to a child, we're sending a 'pleasure' message to the child's brain. You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure.

The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.

What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.

Neither books nor people have Velcro Sides -- there must be a bonding agent -- someone who attaches child to book.

Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives in a world that often defies logic.

Skill sheets, workbooks, basal reader, flash cards are not enough. To convey meaning you need someone sharing the meaning and flavor of real stories with the student.

If you don't read much, you really don't know much. You're dangerous.

I'm with you. No matter what else you have in your head I'm with you and I love you.

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

I have never met anyone who wasn't against war. Even Hitler and Mussolini were, according to themselves.

The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver.

Considerable sacrifices were demanded of the inhabitants of the machine in order that purely abstract formal development... might be carried as far as possible.

We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime.

... we disallow papistical doctrines of free will, of works of supererogation, of merits, of the necessity of auricular confession, and satisfaction to God-wards.

It would be creepy if you knew my home address.

Perhaps the greatest role of parenting, more than directing and telling children what to do, [is] helping [children] connect with their own gifts, particularly conscience.

My number one thing was that if I ever did get successful enough to make it, I wanted to be able to give back to my family.