Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything.

If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

The New England conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't - it just keeps you from enjoying it.

A Marxist has never written a good novel.

No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.