If no one speaks out for [young readers], if they don’t speak out for themselves, all they’ll get for required reading will be the most bland books available. Instead of finding the information they need at the library, instead of finding novels that illuminate life, they will find only those materials to which nobody could possibly object... In this age of censorship I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced — writers’ voices, teachers’ voices, students’ voices — and all because of fear.

[With "Summer Sisters" the publisher] sent me on a big book tour. And it was the most wonderful professional experience of my life. I mean it was like Kleenex on every table wherever I was, friends patting friends on the back and they'd cry and I'd cry.

I thought ["Summer Sisters" ] would be a children's book - two girls who summer together from very different backgrounds. And then when it just kept going and going and going. They kept getting older.

We are friends for life. When we’re together the years fall away. Isn’t that what matters? To have someone who can remember with you? To have someone who remembers how far you’ve come?

I don't necessarily want to talk about a book that I read. Even when I love it.

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.

My mother never talked about sex. I was on the Dr. Ruth [ Westheimer] show once - this is years and years and years ago - and it was her Mother's Day show. And I didn't know what we were going to talk about but what she decided we were going to talk about was female masturbation. My mother had invited all her girlfriends. And you know these were all women in their late seventy's maybe they were in their eighty's by then and then and they were horrified because Dr Ruth had a little she had a little chart up you know "female masturbation".