Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.

Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?

Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department

Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.

Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions

The ladder was there, from the gutter to the university, and for those stalwart enough to ascend it, the schools were a boon and a path out of poverty.

Those who can’t teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers.

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.

American education has been littered with failed fads and foolish ideas for the past century.

Together we proceeded on our way towards catastrophe. [Depressed lawyer and his unsuspecting clients.]

Art is a reflection of poetry and beauty of the heart and mind without the use of any words.

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.

Catholic, which I was until I reached the age of reason

I've got to be the geekiest guy in the world in a lot of ways. I'm like a zeta male.

The artist, like the idiot or clown, sits on the edge of the world, and a push may send him over it.

I was right - Barack Obama's primary objective is to return the nation's wealth to it's rightful owners. This guy comes, if you look at some of his czars, for example, this Mark Lloyd guy.

The form I most enjoy writing is the sonnet or sonnet-like forms, where you have a - you know, three stanzas or two stanzas that lead into a concluding couplet.