Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother.

When I read a good book, it's like traveling the world without ever leaving my chair.

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world.

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.

But put two librarians' heads together, and mountains move.

If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.

September 11 We thought we'd outdistanced history Told our children it was nowhere near; Even when history struck Columbine, It didn't happen here. We took down the maps in the classroom, And when they were safely furled, We told the young what they wanted to hear, That they were immune from a menacing world. But history isn't a folded-up map, Or an unread textbook tome; Now we know history's a fireman's child Waiting at home alone.