Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.

Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.

She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.

She's in tenth grade,' he said. 'I hear she's been homeschooled till now.' Maybe that explains it,' I said.

I love surprises! That's what is great about reading. When you open a book, you never know what you'll find.

Of course, all of their words for a thousand years could not fill the hole left by his mother, but they could raise a loving fence around it so he didn't keep falling in.

Heart and head are contrary historians.