Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

In the course of transferring all my CDs to my iPod, I have found myself wandering the musical hallways of my past and reacquainting myself with music I haven't listened to in years.

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact, the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.

There will always be vain, obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever the cost; there will always be people for whom owning beautiful, dangerous animals brings a sense of power and magic.

I remember, when I was a kid, watching my mother jam herself into her girdle - a piece of equipment so rigid it could stand up on its own - and I remember her coming home from fancy parties and racing upstairs to extricate herself from its cruel iron grip.

When you're researching you're learning. When you're writing, you're teaching.