As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

There is a crisis involving reading in certain communities.

As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer.

Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me.

America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true.

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.