If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.

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

I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.

He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them.

It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

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