Teachers have almost stopped reading aloud to their classes because of the pressure of testing and tight curricula, but it is the books we read together and talk about together that bring us closer together.

We book people are always preaching about reading aloud to children, but unless you do, you can't realize how it enriches family life.

...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.

He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.

The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.

A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.