If You Dedicate Your Attention To Discipline

My Major Allegiance Has Been To Storytelling, Not To History.

What I Am Finding Now Is That My Audience Is Getting Younger As I Get Older, Which Is A Very Good Thing As You Know - You Don't Want Them To Get Older As You Get Older.

I Much Prefer Working With Kids Whose Life Could Be Completely Upended By A Reading Of A Book Over A Weekend. You Give Them A Book To Read - They Go Home And Come Back A Changed Person. And That Is So Much More Interesting And Exciting.

It Was Strange To Stand There In Front Of The Mirror And See Myself Like I Was My Own Best Friend, A Kid Wanted To Hang With Forever. This Was A Boy I Could Travel To The Seacoasts With, A Boy I'd Like To Meet Up With In Foreign Cities Like Calcutta And London And Brazil, A Boy I Could Trust Who Also Had A Good Sense Of Humor And Liked Smoked Oysters From A Can And Good Weed And The Occasional 40 Ounces Of Malt. If I Was Going To Be Alone For The Rest Of My Life This Was The Person I Wanted To Be Alone With.

I Am Aware Of The Changes, But In No Sense Am I Believer That We Live In A Post-racial Society. That's A Description Of Our Inheritance And That Is Theirs, Which Is Inescapable. It Is Doesn't Matter If You Are From New England Or Mississippi. You're An American. It Doesn't Matter If You Are White, Black, Brown, Or Asian. It Is Part Of American Society. You'd Have To Be Blind, Deaf, Or Dumb Not To Know It. The Emphasis On Color Or The Fear Of It, Is All Part Of The Same Dark Flower. I Am Trying To Point To That And To Bring It All The Way Back From Senegal.