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.

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.

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.

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

A man may do worse than make what the world calls a not wholly happy marriage.

[George W.] Bush's presidency was one of the great nightmares of my life to date.

Old. A viable die-able age.

Break ups are painful, but if initiated at the right time can fuel one's sense of optimism.

Essentially, pride is a 'my will' rather than 'thy will' approach to life.

I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily.

I took the role of Ophelia in Hamlet because she is so naive, loving, and innocent.

Honest work is much better than a mansion.

I use different media, but I still think as a painter. I organize my forms and colors on a screen like a painter does on a canvas.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.