When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.

I was wishing I was invisible. Outside, the leaves were falling to the ground, and I was infinitely sad, sad down to my bones. I was sad for Phoebe and her parents and Prudence and Mike, sad for the leaves that were dying, and sad for myself, for something I had lost.

I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.

I tried. Can't do it. Brain's empty.

And what did I think when I was small and why did I forget? And what else will I forget when I grow older? And if you forget is it as if it never happened? Will none of the things you saw or thought or dreamed matter?

Then I thought, boy, isn't that just typical? You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it happens, you feel sad.

In many of my books, I explore the ways in which grandparents or other older persons are shaped by the young, and the young are shaped by the old, in an evolving dance.