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There are nearly one billion illiterate people on Earth.

And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can't read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they're not going to be able to make it in our society.

One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.

The percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985.

Illiteracy is rampant. People are out of communication.

At the turn of the 20th century, the disparity in literacy here in the U.S. largely came down to race. Nearly half of minorities at that time - 45 percent - were illiterate, while 94 percent of white citizens were literate.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Prisons are like the concentration camps of our time. So many go in and never come out, and primarily they're black and Latino.

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.