Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls. And through those holes, we can get a glimpse of the other, and sometimes even like what we see."

~ Elif Shafak

"I don’t like when precious things slip through people’s fingers—especially things that seem defenseless or undercelebrated, like old newspapers, but also unheralded people who may have said sensible things at a certain time in history, but who were completely drowned out by other people. Or minor poets whose lives were instructive."

~ Nicholson Baker

"How do we deal with the stains of our own history? How do we take those aspects of our social history, slavery being the largest one, that we have a democratic country that was founded and based in slavery, and how do you talk about that?"

~ Ann Hamilton