As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.

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.

I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.

Read for fun, read for information, read in order to understand yourself and other people with quite different ideas. Learn about the world beyond your door. Learn to be compassionate and grow in wisdom. Books can help us in all these ways.

I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.

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