When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.

What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.

Concentrate on how good if feels to be alive. No matter what. Just to see the color of the sky, just to smell the air, and feel the wind in your face

I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.

Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.