Taped above Nick Johnson’s desk is the Kurt Vonnegut quote: “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
Johnson said this quote embodies what it feels like to face writer’s block, a situation he tries to teach his playwriting students to overcome.

Khashem Gyal speaks the language of an ancient and evolving culture.
Like many young Tibetans, Gyal says he understands that speaking his native tongue of Amdo Tibetan has become increasingly rare.

UCLA alumna Janice Mirikitani describes the dust as something that connects people.

“Come on, either you think I did it or you don’t … People come expecting a monster, and when they don’t find that, they come expecting a victim … And the reality of it is, I’m just a normal person.”
These are the words of Adnan Syed in the penultimate episode of “Serial,” the highly engrossing podcast series that excavates a first-degree murder case from 1999.

Between classes, UCLA alumnus Michael Soll navigated the stories that unfolded in his imagination. These thoughts often progressed to the next phases of Soll’s writing processes, into his phone, then to his computer, on which he would write from his dorm room desk.

On a large white screen, a projector illuminates the faces of two young men. Their expressions inhabit a small square on their USC student IDs. The violent, stereotypical names on the IDs present the image’s inescapable message – the racial ignorance that divides the students.