“If we would mend the World, we should mend Ourselves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.”

“...why is it that, in creative writing courses today, the very first thing we teach students is write what you know? Perhaps that's not the right way to start at all. Imaginative literature is not necessarily about writing who we are or what we know or what our identity is about. We should teach young people and ourselves to expand our hearts and write what we can feel. We should get out of our cultural ghetto and go visit the next one and the next.”

“We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do. We should set them an example that we wish them to imitate.”

“When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.”

“We will not find security for ourselves if we are estranged from the other people of this world and alienated from them and their cultures. We will not find peace for ourselves and our children by continuing to ignore other people and by arrogantly insisting that the rest of the world must learn from us what we are willing to teach and must speak to us only in our tongue.”

“Ah! What would the world be to usIf the children were no more?We should dread the desert behind usWorse than the dark before.”