Life is like a bowl of spaghetti. Every once in a while, you get a meatball.

I started thinking about life insurance and how nice it would be if you could get insurance that your life would be happy, and that everyone you knew could be happy, and they could all do what they really wanted to do, and they could all find the people they wanted to find.

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.

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

The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolled and rolled and called to me. Come in, it said, come in.

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

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