In every age there are plenty of people around to remind you what you cannot possibly do. Thank goodness, for these naysayers provide a priceless service: They spur...us to achieve great things.

This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.

The golden rule of writing is to write what you care about. If you care about your topic, you'll do your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of really touching a reader in some way.

The kids who leave their favorite authors behind do not in fact leave us utterly abandoned, but in due time drive children of their own to the bookstore and the post office.

No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about...One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.

She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

Her smile put the sunflower to shame.