You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.

What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful.

All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.

...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for a child.

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

I'm sure my first nine years have had a powerful influence on the kind of books I write.

The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.