A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.

I don't remember titles of books or authors from when I was young. I remember the title of only one book, which was 'The Timber Toes.' I remember it was a family of little wooden people who lived in the woods, and for some reason that stayed with me.

What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave, sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened down to your very bones.

Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or two, it’s almost harder. You have room left over – empty spaces that you think you’ve got to fill up.

I cannot just write a frivolous book, a la-di-da book. Everything isn't la-di-da. There is something that's going to pull you up short. I want to reassure young readers. I want to comfort them, to not fear the unexpected.

A person isn't a bird. You can't cage a person.

You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.