“There is a belief advanced today, and in some cases by conservative black authors, that poor children and particularly black children should not be allowed to hear too much about these matters. If they learn how much less they are getting than rich children, we are told, this knowledge may induce them to regard themselves as "victims," and such "victim-thinking," it is argued, may then undermine their capacity to profit from whatever opportunities may actually exist. But this is a matter of psychology-or strategy-and not reality. The matter, in any case, is academic since most adolescents in the poorest neighborhoods learn very soon that they are getting less than children in the wealthier school districts. They see suburban schools on television and they see them when they travel for athletic competitions. It is a waste of time to worry whether we should tell them something they could tell to us. About injustice, most poor children in American cannot be fooled.”

“No matter what happens in a child's home, no matter what other social and economic factors may impede a child, there's no question in my mind that a first-rate school can transform almost everything.”

“It's sad that some people who have one exciting moment spend the rest of their lives rehashing it.”

“Businessmen are not in business to lose customers, and schools do not exist to free their clients from the agencies of mass persuasion. School and media possess a productive monopoly upon the imagination of a child.”

“'Savage Inequalities' was about school finance, and 'Amazing Grace' primarily dealt with medical and social injustices in New York. But with 'Ordinary Resurrections,' I had no predetermined agenda. When I met with the children, I was not in pursuit of any line of thinking. In our conversations, I let them lead me where they wanted to go.”

“So long as the most vulnerable people in our population are consigned to places that the rest of us will always shun and flee and view with fear, I am afraid that educational denial, medical and economic devastation, and aesthetic degradation will be inevitable.”

“We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals. No, I refuse to pretend the problem is insufficient knowledge. We lack the theological will to do it.”

“So long as these kinds of inequalities persist, all of us who are given expensive educations have to live with the knowledge that our victories are contaminated because the game has been rigged to our advantage.”

“'Amazing Grace' is not a book of interviews or onetime snapshots. It's a memoir of a journey that took me into a place I had never been and took over two years of my life. I don't think the people in this book would have said the things to me that they did if they perceived me as a reporter.”

“'Death at an Early Age' was about racial segregation in Boston. 'Illiterate America' was about grownups who can't read. 'Rachel and Her Children' was about people who were homeless in the middle of Manhattan.”

“In schools with a history of chaos, the teacher who can keep the classroom calm becomes virtually indispensable.”