Coleen

“If you don't like a book, you can close it. But you have no right to say I can't open it.”
― Coleen Murtagh Paratore, The Cupid Chronicles

“I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”
― Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Until then, have great expectations. Keep believing you dreams will come true. And remember, when life throws you a pit... plant a cherry tree.”
― Coleen Murtagh Paratore, The Wedding Planner's Daughter

“I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.”
― Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X