And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

I just met someone who read Gone With the Wind 62 times for exactly that same reason. She couldn't bear that it wasn't real. She wanted to live in it.

Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

Nancy Drew was always changing her outfits. I despised girls' clothing, I couldn't wait to get home from school and get out of it. The last thing I wanted to read was minute descriptions of Nancy's frocks.

It's a hard thing to age a character because you can't really suddenly give someone gray hair.