Julius Lester quotes:

Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.

How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?

Freeform radio is an art form. The airwaves are the empty canvas, the producer is the artist, and the sound is the paint.

Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.

Goodness was not a trait you acquired; it was a value you practiced when you were on the verge of doing evil.

When I read students' attempts at creative writing it is obvious immediately that most of them have not read much or widely. The aspiring writer must read everything he or she can to appreciate the myriad ways words are used and to what effect.

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

A good teacher is one who helps you become who you feel yourself to be. A good teacher is also one who says something that you won't understand until 10 years later.

Each of us is comprised of stories, stories not only about ourselves but stories about ancestors we never knew and people we've never met. We have stories we love to tell and stories we have never told anyone. The extent to which others know us is determined by the stories we choose to share. We extend a deep trust to someone when we say, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." Sharing stories creates trust because through stories we come to a recognition of how much we have in common.

The failure of modern living is the failure of the imagination...Literature is the royal road that enables us to enter the realm of the imagination.

But there are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine.

We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that's what we remember.

...part of the mind's job was to cast doubt on what the heart knew to be true, and the heart, because it had no words, often lost the argument

It ain't how long you know somebody that means anything. It's what that person mean to you in your heart.

... the object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question.

To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?

Faith is not something that one has; faith is something that one practices at the very moment in your life when you really don't believe anything, and you're in the worst kind of despair.

Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.

The young accept the extraordinary as normal because they do not compare their lives with those of others when everyone is like them.

I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.

Some wounds go so deep that you don't even feel them until months, maybe years, later.

Books, and especially fiction, do not proceed from ideas. They are born from feelings

If I canot know your name, may I light a lamp so I can see your face?' If you sould ever see my face, you will lose me forever.' Why?' Psyche wanted to know. 'Are you ugly? Are you afraid I won't love you if I see your face?' Perhaps I am afraid that if you see my face, it will be THAT that you will love and not me.' I understand, believe me. I know what that feels like.

Dying ain't important. Everyone does that. What's important is how well you do your living.