What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

My books for adults had been previously challenged and banned so I'd had experience with it. I always find it sad and amusing: Sad to think that such archaic and potentially dangerous censorious beliefs still exist, and amused because these censors only make a book more powerful and seductive when trying to ban it.

I didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to people when they ask how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?

I look more Indian when I'm serious.

White Americans have a short memory.

There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.