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

As readers can probably tell from my books, I love the outdoors.

Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images.

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.

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

I don't want to because boys don't write poetry. Girls do.

...but it doesn't feel crazy to us. It feels like what we do.