If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?

Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all.

You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.

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

the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.

Sitting in cold wet britches for an hour was no fun even in a magic kingdom.

A library is a feast to which we are all invited.