...One reason I became a writer was that I figured out that if you call yourself a writer, you can read all you want and people think that you are working.

We can read the paper or current magazines and learn about national and world events, think about controversial subjects, learn how to disagree respectfully, and how, finally, to act on our convictions. We can read for pure delight, and if we do this as a family or classroom or other group we can build wonderful memories.

If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.

Lord, let me heed the angels you put in my path.

All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.

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.'

Sometimes you need to give people something that's for them, not just something that makes you feel good giving it.