When your dawn theater sounds to clear your sinuses: don't delay. Jump. Those voices may be gone before you hit the shower to align your wits. Speed is everything. The 90-mph dash to your machine is a sure cure for life rampant and death most real. Make haste to live. Oh, God, yes. Live. And write. With great haste.

There is more than one way to burn a book.

If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. And no one can help me. Not even you.

I feel like I own all the kids in the world because, since I've never grown up myself, all my books are automatically for children.

First grade is very cheap. It's the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don't do it right.

Libraries are the center of our lives. There's no use going to a university if you don't live at the library.