It wasn't so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing - one of May Belle's puzzles with this huge gap where somebody's eye should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.

You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.

A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means.

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.

It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.

I can't believe there will ever be a time when the book is truly obsolete. It is the perfect technology and feeds the soul.

Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.