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.

My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart.

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

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.