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 am certainly a fearful person, but fearless in my writing. So there's that other person inside.

Do not tell me what to do and do not tell me what I can't do.

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.

I still get angry when older people assume that everyone in my generation, screws around. They're probably the same ones who think all kids use dope. It's true that we are more open than our parents but that just means we accept sex and talk about it. It doesn't mean we are all jumping into bed together.

I always had stories inside my head and one day I just decided to start writing them down. I didn't actually decide.

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.