“We write by the light of every story we have ever read. ”

“[A young adult novel] ends not with happily ever after, but at a new beginning, with the sense of a lot of life yet to be lived.”

“The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.”

“If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.”

“As I pen these words to leave a lasting record, I wonder myself where it all began.”

“Fiction isn't what 'was'. It's 'what if'?”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about i...”

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be r...”

“I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are goin...”