It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.

I loved to read when I was a kid, and as soon as I realized that an actual person got to make up the books I loved so much, I decided that that was the job for me.

I like to know what I'm celebrating before I put on a party hat.

That porch is a happy-looking place, and my father - burdened, stoop-shouldered, cadaverously thin - doesn't seem to belong on it.

I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.

Nothing was more valuable than the printed word.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.