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

Martin Wilson's What They Always Tell Us hears the voices of the young as they struggle toward adulthood.

Grandma, how old is she?" "Oh I don't know." Grandma said. "You'd have to cut off her head and count the rings in her neck.

This is how you hold onto your family. You hold them with open hands so they are free to find futures of their own. It's just that simple.

Only the nonreader fears books.

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

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