To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life.

You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.

...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.

Nothing smelled so good or danced so well as a birch fire.

. . . Jess believed, that she thought he was the best. It was not the kind of best that counted either at school or at home, but it was a genuine kind of best. He kept the knowledge of it buried inside himself like a pirate treasure. He was rich, very rich, but no one could know about it for now except his fellow outlaw, Julia Edmunds.