Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. I think the best way for children to treasure reading is for them to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

I was over at Alison's [McGhee], I think we were playing Scrabble. I remember we were both complaining - yeah, we sound like whiners - about how hard writing is, and how we didn't have a story to work on. Alison said, 'Why don't we work on writing something together,' and I said, 'Eh, I don't know if I could work that way.' She said, 'Well, just show up here and we'll see,' and I said, 'Well, what would it be about?' She said, 'Duh, it'd be about a tall girl and a short girl.' So I agreed to come and try it for a day.

I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.

I like to think of myself as a storyteller.

And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.

You are the ever-expanding universe to me