Friendship doesn't have anything to do with shoring up weakness. It has to do with respect and consideration for those you care about. It has to do with wanting to give something back to those you admire.

What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that's what we have to sustain us in our endeavors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.

Friendship doesn't have anything to do with shoring up weakness. It has to do with respect and consideration for those you care about. It has to do with wanting to give something back to those you admire.

I remember one winter, when I was about five or six, I spent three days with another boy, tracking a bobcat that had been sighted in another county fifty miles away, but which I was sure had come into our neighborhood.

The Golden Compass is one of the best fantasy / adventure stories that I have read. This is a book no one should miss.

Testing of self is a regular part of our own lives, so it seems natural to make it a part of the lives of my characters, as well, albeit on a much different level.

My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.