But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.

Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.

I was born 50 years after slavery, in 1913. I was allowed to read. My mother, who was a teacher, taught me when I was a very young child. The first school I attended was a small building that went from first to sixth grade. There was one teacher for all of the students. There could be anywhere from 50 to 60 students of all different ages.

I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.

A great book seeks to explain causality, not correlation. It works to point out the circumstances in which it works, and where it doesn't. And in so doing, it is broadly applicable.

In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.