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.

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

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

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.

Everything comes in useful once in a hundred years.