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" So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children. "

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" I admired the work ethic of the cowboys I read about. The idea of these young people taking on this much responsibility was impressive. I would like modern readers to have an appreciation of this. "

Walter Dean Myers

Appreciation

Work

" I am very much interested in getting parents to read to children, and trying to get people mentoring children. If I can do both I'll be happy. "

" When my family fell apart, it was such a troubled part of my life... I think I could understand what I was going through, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it. "

" After so many books and so many years of writing, I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I love the process of writing and, if I allowed myself, I would write far too much every day. One weakness which I've struggled to overcome is my tendency to having my characters ruminate for pages. "

" I think that what we need to do is say, 'Reading is going to really affect your life.' You take a black man who doesn't have a job, but you say to him, 'Look, you can make a difference in your child's life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.' That's what I would like to do. "

" I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train. "

" There were two very distinct voices going on in my head and I moved easily between them. One had to do with sports, street life and establishing myself as a male... The other voice, the one I had from my street friends and teammates, was increasingly dealing with the vocabulary of literature. "

" As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament. "

" I began going to juvenile prisons. And some of these kids face some very, very tough lives. How do they handle these lives? Do they even know that if their life is bad, that they're still OK? Do they know that? Do they know that someone is thinking the same way that they're thinking? "

" From my foster parents, the Deans, I received the love that was ultimately to strengthen me, even when I had forgotten its source. It was my foster mother, a half-Indian, half-German woman, who taught me to read, though she herself was barely literate. I remember her reading to me every day from 'True Romance' magazine. "

Walter Dean Myers

Day

Love

" The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena. "

" I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott. "

" I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries. "

" We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens. "

" I remember one time being told I could not play in a basketball game at the College of William and Mary because I was black, even though I was playing with a United States Army team. "

" There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative. "

" One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict. "

" When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat. "

" As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this. "

" I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings. "

" I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school. "

Walter Dean Myers

Bright

Falling

" My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic. "

" I had seen the ballet of 'Swan Lake' as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years. "

Walter Dean Myers

Grace

Great

" America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true. "

" Now, my mom did not read well and she read 'True Romance' magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the 'True Romance.' And that was wonderful. "

Walter Dean Myers

Mom

She

" I don't want to approach reading from the viewpoint of that it's a pleasant adjunct to your life. I want to approach it from the idea that you have to read or you're going to suffer. There's a difference to be made - and you can make it if you read with your child. "

" Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies, the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements. "

" My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read. "

" Growing up in Harlem, I had the chance to practice with a Negro League team. At fifteen, I was over six feet tall and a fair athlete, but my skills didn't come close to some of the players I saw. "

" We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct. "