Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.

Words on the page are never prisoners of the page

My life was pouring out my feet and seeping through cracks in the floor; yet still I knelt and did not move, for fear she'd let go my hands. Let me stay, I wanted to beg: Please don't make me go.

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.

She doesn't understand that doors, walls, fences, ceilings - they're helpless to keep out what determinedly desires to get in.

There's fire in my fingers. I burn everything I touch.

I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.