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In my family, education was something you endured. My parents weren't educated past high school, and the only book in our house was a 'Reader's Digest' condensed book. Can you imagine?

It was hard for my father to read; it took him a long time, but he had tremendous retention and tremendous appreciation for writing.

Numbers of the old people cannot read. Those who can seldom do.

I had amazing intellectual privilege as a kid. My mom taught me to read when I was two or three. When I was five, I read and wrote well enough to do my nine-year older brother's homework in exchange for chocolate or cigarettes. By the time I was 10, I was reading Orwell, Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and the Koran. I was reading comic books, too.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me, read with me, read with me. It was wonderful.

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books to be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren's hands.

My dad's passion was to teach adults to read so they could read to their kids.

My father was a tyrant about reading, and that put me off books when I was little.

I grew up in a home where reading was a big deal.