A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.

When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.

It wasn't so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing - one of May Belle's puzzles with this huge gap where somebody's eye should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.

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

Punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse - except August.

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

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