My mother would read aloud to my father and me in the evening. She read mainly travel books.

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt. [...] The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake

Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona?

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.

Problem solving, and I don't mean algebra, seems to be my life's work. Maybe it's everyone's life's work.

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.