What we need to wake people up to now is the crisis in imagination and concern for the greater good. We have no idea what the next ten years, much less the next fifty years, will demand of the coming generation. What we do know is that unless we have a people prepared and eager to meet those crises creatively and compassionately, there is not much hope for this poor old planet of ours.

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

We are trying to communicate that which lies in our deepest heart, which has no words, which can only be hinted at through the means of a story. And somehow, miraculously, a story that comes from deep in my heart calls from a reader that which is deepest in his or her heart, and together from our secret hidden selves we create a story that neither of us could have told alone.

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

...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.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.

Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed.