Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe

A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.

You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this

I have nothing from my childhood. I think you carry those books with you. It's like in [Ray] Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Books are outlawed in this future society so people become the book they love by memorizing it.