When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

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

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.

I realize, of course, that I wasn't born knowing how to read. I just can't imagine a time when I didn't know how.

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.