I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.

Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

[Fairy tales] are like a journey to the woods and the many ways you can get lost. Some people say it's not a good idea to read fairy tales to anyone under the age of eight because they are brutal and raw. When I was a kid I often felt that kids's books were speaking down to me, but I never felt that way about fairy tales. They are bloody and scary, but so is life.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head