...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child.

What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful.

Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.

We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.