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 woke up one morning and realized that what I wanted to say to everyone - children, young people, adults - was: Read for your life.

The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.

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

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.

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?