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.

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

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.

The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything.

That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.

I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.

I have been mocked by beauty, too. But it was the beauty which cost me nothing that in the end turned upon me.