If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.

This feeling is not unlike the sinking in one's stomach when one is in an elevator that suddenly goes down, or when you are snug in your bed and your closet door suddenly creaks open to reveal the person who has been hiding there.

The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything.

It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.

It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right.

I'd finished the first two [books] and they were going to to be published, and [editor] said, "We need you to write a summary that will drive people to these books." And it took forever. I couldn't think of a thing to say. I looked at the back of other children's books that were full of giddy praise and corny rhetorical questions, you know, "Will she have a better time at summer camp than she thinks?" "How will she escape from the troll's dungeon?" All these terrible, terrible summaries of books, and I just couldn't.