This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

Shh" he said. "Look." "Where?" "Can't you see'um?" he whispered. "All the Terabithians standing on tiptoe to see you." "Me?" "Shh, yes. There's a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arrving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?

It's such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment.

A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means.

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.