The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

I would make up [Theodor] Seuss-like books at night when I was cleaning up from the dinner, you know, putting these little kids to bed, reading them rhyming books. And so that's what I started doing. They were really bad. I have some in a box and it says on the box, it's a note to my kids you know, when I die, if you ever publish these I will come back and haunt you.

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

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.

you can't deny they ever happened. You can't deny you ever loved them, love them still, even if loving them causes you pain

I think we made out [sexuality changing]. I think that's really great, and we didn't jump into intercourse. And there were no blow jobs.

That's my anxiety dream. I go to the library and all the books on my subject are out.