That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

Where would we be without inhibitions? Theyre quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world.

As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.