Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children's right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.

There's a mouse in here with me. He's sitting there in the light of the lamp, looking up at me. He seems as surprised to see me as I am to see him. There he goes. I can hear him still, scurrying about somewhere under the hayrick. I think he's gone now. I hope he comes back. I miss him already.

I don't want to be separate from something that's important to me.

I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.

Children have to be motivated to want to learn to read. Reading must not be taught simply as a school exercise.

I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on 'Aesop's Fables,' 'Brothers Grimm,' 'La Fontaine,' all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine.

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.