I love you, Michael Wagner.” “Forever?” he asked. “Forever,” I said.

You think everything can be magically cured with vitamins?” “Everything but us.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.

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

It was a such a surprise, such an absolute shocking surprise to me to not know what you're doing and to find out that this thing that you don't even know how to do, that you're sure you don't know how to do, speaks to so many people and touches so many people in some way.

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.

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.