Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of a book speaking to us.

Aren't we all waiting to be read by someone, praying that they'll tell us that we make sense?

There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.

Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer’s is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times.

Dreamers dream. Readers read. Writers write. I was born to be all three.