If You Were To Look At Each

If Someone's Different From You And It Scares You Or Makes You Mad, That's God Telling You To Take A Closer Look. If You're Scared Or Mad, That's About You, Not About The Person Who Scares You Or Angers You.

Censors Can Make A Case For Zero Tolerance In Language. They Can Make The Argument That Since We Don't Allow Our Children To Use That Language In Schools, We Also Shouldn't Give Them Stories In Which It Is Used.

Certainly Working With Teens Keeps Me Up To Date With Language And With Certain Kinds Of Thinking. I Often Feel Like I Have To Go Back To That 17-year-old Chris Crutcher, And That Forms The Core Voice. I Can Draw On Teens From 1964 To 2001 To Find A Part Of The Voice I Need.

...the Magnificent Seven Consisted Of One Swimmer Of Color, A Representative From Each Extreme Of The Educational Spectrum, A Muscle Man, A Giant, A Chameleon, And A One-legged Psychopath. When I Envision Us Walking Seven Abreast Through The Halls Of Cutter High, Decked Out In The Sacred Blue And Gold, My Heart Swells.

You Put Yourself Out There In The Truest Way You Can And Hope Others Do The Same. You'll Connect Or You Won't, But You Did What You Could.