I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.

when i reached the bottom, i finally understood what Guthrie meant when he shouted, "LIBERO!" It was a celebration of being alive

I was wishing I was invisible. Outside, the leaves were falling to the ground, and I was infinitely sad, sad down to my bones. I was sad for Phoebe and her parents and Prudence and Mike, sad for the leaves that were dying, and sad for myself, for something I had lost.

I wondered about Mrs. Winterbottom and what she meant about living a tiny life. If she didn't like all that baking and cleaning and jumping up to get bottles of nail polish remover and sewing hems, why did she do it? Why didn't she tell them to do some of the things themselves? Maybe she was afraid there would be nothing left for her to do. There would be no need for her and she would become invisible and no one would notice.

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

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

In a course of a lifetime, what does it matter?