I enjoy receiving and giving realistic fiction, for both children and adults, with strong characters, beautiful language, and humane visions.

As readers can probably tell from my books, I love the outdoors. I love to hike, kayak, and swim. I also love to read (which is probably not a surprise) and I love the theater and art museums. I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills.

Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.

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.

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.

I am drawn to the ways in which we are shaped by people and by place.

It can't be dead. It was alive just a minute ago.