What exactly did people do when they had all the time in the world and could do whatever they liked?

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.

Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: 'What is real? What is truth?' They have to learn it; they don't automatically know it. To them, it's a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.

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

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.

On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora's box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.

Once 'Walk Two Moons' received the Newbery Medal, I decided to write full-time. Partly because there seemed to be an audience out there who wanted to read what I wanted to write, and partly because I could now support myself financially through writing.