What I have come to believe is that joy is the twin sister of gratitude. I am most joyful when I am most grateful..

Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was t….

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it..

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing..

...the long train ride was like traveling through limbo. You weren't anywhere when you were on a train, she decided. You weren't where you had been, ….

He may not have been born with guts, but he didn't have to die without them..

Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are man….

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not..

We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes..

It's such a thrill when an adult comes up to me and says, 'I read your book as a child and really loved it.' That's a tremendous compliment..

Many people are angry when they make a mistake, but very few people have the sense to be sorry..

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, th….

I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest..

If you could hold your nose to avoid a stink, or close your eyes to cut out a sight, why not shut off your brain to avoid a thought?.

You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like..

I realize, of course, that I wasn't born knowing how to read. I just can't imagine a time when I didn't know how..

More than fifty years ago Sputnik dramatically raised the nation's awareness of what was lacking in science and math education in America. What we ne….

The last dregs of winter spoiling the taste of everything..

Reading has made such a profound difference to my life. I'm sure I became a writer because of the power of literature in my own life..

Impressed. Lord. He had nearly drowned..

Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the….