“An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.”

“There is no education like adversity.”

“When I want to read a novel, I write one.”

Writing is not primarily escape, but use.

I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.'

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer...No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.

Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.

“More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world--a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward. . . . .

“I think perhaps education doesn’t do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.” 

“all the education and good intentions in the world couldn’t help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.” 

“The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.” 

“Three keys to success: read, read, read.” 

“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.” 

I continued my efforts to educate myself. This was no easy task under the Russian government of Warsaw; yet I found more opportunities than in the country.

“...the educational systems are oriented to maintaining the existing social and economic structures instead of transforming them” 

“. . . public education and Social Security are residues of a dangerous conception that we're all in this together and we have to work together to create a better life and a better future. If you're trying to maximize profit or maximize consumption, then working together is the wrong idea. It has to be beaten out of people's heads. Solidarity makes people hard to control and prevents them from being passive objects of private power. So you have to have a propaganda system that overcomes any deviation from the principle of subjugation to power systems.” 

“Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don’t think people didn’t know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we’re educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don’t educate them, what we call “education,” they’re going to take control — “they” being what Alexander Hamilton called the “great beast,” namely the people.” 

“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.” 

“ Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.”