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

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

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.

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

We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes.

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.