Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.

there is no such thing as fantasy unrelated to reality

Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work.

I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it.

You can start making up any kind of story if you want to.

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.

One of the few graces of getting old - and God knows there are few graces - is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me.