Quotes About Engagement

Offensive Takeaway Point: We should look for a way to stop responding to initiatives of the adversary and start behaving in such a way that they have to figure out how to respond to us. Take the initiative.

Sensory experience should not be draped on top of the story as sort of a last-minute decoration. Done right, it is woven into the fabric of the story, and as this happens, the reader is woven in, right alongside the description. In giving advice to writers, E. L. Doctorow once said that good writing should communicate more than the mere fact that it is raining. The reader should feel rained on. A

Education is the process of selling someone on books.

Know something about the world, and by this I mean the world outside of books. This might require joining the Marines, or working on an oil rig or as a hash slinger at a truck stop in Kentucky. Know what it smells like out there. If everything you write smells like a library, then your prospective audience will be limited to those who like the smell of libraries.

More broadly, it's the place where people who really love stuff go to express that love, and where people who want to sell them stuff try desperately to woo them.

I think I can communicate with kids because I don't try to communicate with kids. Ninety percent of the children's books patronize the child and say there's a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don't do that. I treat the child as an equal.

According to the classic Zen saying, "Do everything as you do anything.

A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love.

Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.

The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it.

You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.

Never leave a child to their own devices. Unless it's a piano.

When a child's mind begins to wander because of something you (the teacher) have said, wander with it. When it begins to wander because of nothing you said, kick yourself in the posterior and say something worth wandering about!

You gotta open the kid before you open the book.

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me NOW! It is fun to have fun But you have to know how.

When he worked, he really worked. But when he played, he really PLAYED.

Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive.... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~

We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it alive and vital. Virtually every page is a cliff-hanger—you've got to force them to turn it.

So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!

This," cried the Mayor, "is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red To come to the aid of their country!" he said. "We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!

Once you recognize what is happening, you have a moral obligation to become involved. Perhaps all you can do is tell others, write letters, or contribute financially to those who are working to expose what is taking place. If you choose to do nothing, you become an accomplice to evil, and one day you will have to answer for your failure to act.

Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon