I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep.

[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.

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.

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

Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.