"People don’t understand that literacy rates have remained stagnant since 2000 — that’s pretty surprising in a world where we think we’re being super progressive. We have 70% of the prison population in the United States reading at a fourth grade level; people are functionally illiterate. The ability to read and write affects way way more than ‘can you read a book?’ It affects 'can you read medication instructions on a bottle? Are you able to access transportation? Are you able to get a job that’s not solely manual labour?"One of the other issues we have is that people end up in crime and in poverty because they have not been educated. It’s that kind of cycle. So where do you start? I’d rather start with early childhood education.""I think we have enough money to go around. I mean, frankly, I don’t think it should be an either-or situation. Even though we’re always talking about deficits, we’re obviously a wealthy, first world society. It should be our obligation to make sure that everybody’s educated and everybody has access to health care.""There were so many. Certainly as a kid, everything my mother read to me — Laura Ingalls Wilder: To be able to kind of choose an author in the first grade from [ages] seven to 10, to go through that series that way, was incredibly meaningful. Louisa May Alcott’s books. There were many, many.""I just finished Ian McEwan’s The Children Act . And I’m in the middle of George Saunders' new book. I like to hold a book: I find I lose interest in something digitally. It might be the way my brain works — the way I’ve trained by brain to read. I don’t have the same level of engagement with digitised stuff in fiction. With books, I like an actual book."