This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

To hear the phrase "our only hope" always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn't work, there is nothing left.

I'd written my first novel for adults, which was called Basic Eight and was set in a high school, and we were having a devil of a time selling it. It ended up in the hands of an editor of a children's publishing house, for which it was entirely inappropriate. She said, "Well, we can't publish this, but I think you should write something for children," which I thought was a really terrible idea.

Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, "The world is quiet here," as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

No reality has the power to dispel a dream.

Take back the smile and the night, take it all back, I wish I could.