I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.

In another project I worked on just a few years ago, a staging of Peter and the Wolf, which I translated into Yiddish and sang on a stage in New York City. Thank God very few people knew I was doing it! But the kids in the audience loved it - even though it was all in Yiddish.

Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.

To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult.

I really don't like the city anymore. You get pushed and harassed and people grope you. It's too tumultuous. It's too crazy.

Kids books Grownup books That's just marketing. Books are books.

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.