I meet people on the street or at book signings and they tend to treat me as if they know me, as if we're connected. It's great.

I'm a people person. I never get tired of watching people, especially young people.

The truth will make you odd.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.

If all you leave in the library is books that you think speak to everyone, what are you going to have? You'd have nothing.

The parent reads the book. The kid reads the book and then they can talk about the characters instead of talking about themselves. You know there's a connection even if you don't talk about it when you read the same books.