I never want to be a role model..

Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away..

Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken..

Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you..

I'm continually astonished with myself how different people bring out things in me that I never knew I had inside me. Each new friendship can make yo….

I think for everybody reading can be a solace, illumination, education..

There's a notion of art in this country that you have to be nutty or special or "called" in order to be an artist. I believe the questions everyone s….

Look at me, he said to her. His arms and legs jerked. Look at me. You got your wish. I have learned how to love. And it’s a terrible thing. I’m broke….

I read my books out loud to myself because of the demands of the story and demands of language..

It's a book [Bink & Gollie] about shortness and tallness, so I think it's appropriate to discuss the virtues of shortness..

What was it like...to have someone who knew you would always return and who welcomed you with open arms?.

You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next..

In my stories for children, I sometimes show a hard, harsh, dangerous world. I'm going to show you the way it is, but I'm going to also tell you that….

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. I think the best way for children to treasure reading is for them to….

He was weeping. Although 'weeping' really is to small a word for the activity the kind had undertaken. Tears were cascading from his eyes. A small pu….

I grew up in Florida, and I wanted to go home and I couldn't. I didn't have the money. The book [The Tiger Rising] was a way to go home..

If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to und….

Longing is not always a reciprocal thing..

What I hope is that the book [Bink & Gollie] delights children. What I hope is that they laugh and laugh and laugh, just as we did when we wrote them..

I think, oh my god, kids are reading, and they care about a book enough to come over and talk to me about a book that they care about. If I think abo….

Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing. And a ridiculous thing, too..