I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.

It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. I have nothing now but praise for my life.

I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'

Then one day my sister abandoned me at the 1939 World's Fair, and that incident is the essence of In the Night Kitchen. I was standing there with hundreds of other people waving back at the little midgets dressed like bakers when I turned around and my sister was gone! The next thing I know I'm screaming and crying and policemen are taking me to a big place with tons of kids who had all been abandoned like me. At least I was old enough to give them a name and an address.

I hate, loathe and despise schools.School is bad for you if you have any talent. You should be cultivating that talent in your own particular way.

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

If life is so critical, if Anne Frank could die, if my friend could die, children were as vulnerable as adults, and that gave me a secret purpose to my work, to make them live. Because I wanted to live. I wanted to grow up.