What has gone catastrophically wrong in England and the States is that for 30 years we've lost the ability to talk about the state in positive terms. We've raised a generation or two of young people who don't think to ask, 'What can the state do that is good?'
I've had Republicans come to me and say, 'Tell me how I should talk to young people!' as if it's some foreign language or something.
I believe that young people wearing hoods, unless they are very young, can be frightening. What are they hiding? Why don't they want to come out into the light with the rest of us? They may be perfectly nice, but the hoods send an uncertain statement.
I believe young people from working families should have access to debt-free education because I know from my own experience that a high-school degree is not always enough, and a higher education can change a life.
The strength of my mother is something I didn't pay attention to for so long. Here she was, this single mom, who was part of the Great Migration, who was part of a Jim Crow south, who said, 'I'm getting my kids out of here. I'm creating opportunities for these young people by any means necessary.'
I feel a responsibility to try and give back. I see young people out there who are trained, and any way I can help them and give them an opportunity is gratifying.
Creativity, for a lot of young people, is a coping mechanism. It's the only place they feel comfortable. It's the only time they feel like they're being heard or can make a difference, is if they can go into a room and do a drawing or go to a garage and play a song or retreat to this world.
I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.
I think it's important to give young people the freedom to follow their ideas and pursue their interests.
When I talk to young people who want to go to Broadway or whatever, I say, 'The highs are very high and the lows are very low and then there is a lot in between.'
I tell young people, including my own kids, don't do this, it's too difficult. It's a career full of rejection, disappointment and failure. It's murderously hard on the ego. Don't become an actor.
Young people, our rights and the things we care about, have been taken away because it doesn't really matter to the politicians whether or not we have them. We're just another demographic to try and please, but there's no point if we aren't voting.
We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.
I've always liked TV shows that have slightly unlikable leads, where you root for them in spite of a lot of things. I know it's not common with shows with young people; they have to be so likable. But, I mean, teenagers just generally aren't very likable. I know I wasn't as a teenager.
When I was brought up in Sweden, there was a great opportunity for young people to learn how to act in our municipal theaters with their small companies. You would be under contract for eight months and have the summer free to take other opportunities.
The cost of college education today is so high that many young people are giving up their dream of going to college, while many others are graduating deeply in debt.
In a way, 'On the Road's greatest victory is that nobody's eyes will be opened any longer by reading it; the last time I met any young people who were actually 'on the road' was when I covered Occupy St. Louis. Those few, dirty kids were fighting a battle even they couldn't articulate.
There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.
There's something about losing friends, particularly young people, where it's not something that you get over. I don't believe there's a healing process.
But for me, it is when a student has died. I find the death of a young person the most difficult and painful of times. To explain it to other young people, to see a bright future snuffed out, is just awful. I am haunted by those deaths.
In 2005, I visited my home state of Texas, spending time on a ranch outside the town of Post. Then spending some time on a large ranch outside Archer City. I was taken by just how few young people I saw anywhere.
It is every parent's nightmare when a child is in trouble with the law. As a parent, you can do your best to guide young people, but as adults, they make their own choices and live with the consequences of those decisions.
Young people have such tremendous energy.
About the only way you can find out about the common man, his slang, what he looked like, what he thought, is through the comic strips. It's a powerful way for young people to learn history.
I encourage everyone to become their dream. Most young people get sidetracked and never end up doing what they really set out to do.
All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don't invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don't invest in them, we lose.
It's interesting, I had absolutely no maternal instinct. I'm much more interested in young people now.
I'm passionate about speaking out against bullying and speaking up for self-awareness with young people and body-image issues and self-esteem issues.
When you get as old as I am, you kind of believe there's nothing new under the sun, but there's always a fresh way of looking at something. That's why I love working with young people. They remind you of things you used to know and have since forgotten.
What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.
Many of the young people living in inner-city America don't see themselves - I mean, they even talk about things like death and dying. And there's a tremendous loss of hope. And of all the things to lose, I think nothing is worse or more difficult to overcome than the loss of hope.
Writing for adults and writing for young people is really not that different. As a reporter, I have always tried to write as clearly and simply as possible. I like clean, unadorned writing. So writing for a younger audience was largely an exercise in making my prose even more clear and direct, and in avoiding complicated digressions.
There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why.
Since we launched the original 'Pop Idol' in England, I've remained close with Simon Fuller. Working as executive producer on 'American idol' for its first seven years not only was an inspirational journey into the heart of American pop culture, it opened my eyes to the untapped potential of the incredibly dynamic young people in this world.
A children's author on a soapbox is not a pleasant sight but I have become drawn into issues, slightly unwillingly, relating to young people, literacy and youth justice: just look at the number of young people we have locked up in prison, and the uselessness of it.
Throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, federal mandatory minimum laws were implemented that forced judges to deliver sentences far lengthier than they would have if allowed to use their own discretion. The result has been decades of damage, particularly to young people.
