I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.

I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.

Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

I always write with music. It takes me a while to figure out the right piece of music for what I'm working on. Once I figure it out, that's the only thing I'll play.

I like to think of myself as a storyteller.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading.

I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.

I am busier now than I ever imagined I would be, but I feel blessed in that I have found what I am supposed to be doing with my life. It's wonderful to tell stories and have people listen to them.

I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.

I hate to cook and love to eat.

I work full-time in a used bookstore. I get up. I drink a cup of coffee. I think, The last thing I want to do is write. Then I go to the computer and write.

My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.

Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?

I thought I was going nowhere. Now I can see there was a pattern.

I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.

I didn't start working on children's books until I got a job at a book warehouse on the children's floor. When I started reading some of the books, I was so impressed.

There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.

Your clothes should be tight enough to show youre a woman but loose enough to show youre a lady.

The philosophy of fasting calls upon us to know ourselves, to master ourselves, and to discipline ourselves the better to free ourselves. To fast is to identify our dependencies, and free ourselves from them.

That's an old saying I just made up.

Email has the virtue - sounds like a bad thing, but it's the virtue of being the lowest common denominator messaging protocol. Everyone can have it. It can cross organizational boundaries. No one owns it. It's not some particular company's platform.

Most of us only dream, some of us go and get their dreams. Dreamers know failure; dreamers in action know victory.

I think there has been a lack of full cooperation from too many people in the Muslim community.

First things first

I think I will always stay involved in tennis and would like to give back by helping out young players. I have done a little commentary and may one day enjoy doing that again.

It is the liberal philosophy, not the conservative one, that views humans as selfish automatons.

As a drummer youre always fighting for a level that you never quite attain.

My idea right from the beginning, I guess, was to dismantle the immune system one gene at a time so we could track the mutations that cause problems.

I'm extremely competitive with myself. But I'm not actively competitive with other women in the business. Which may have been a mistake. I've never had someone in my life, agent or otherwise, fighting for me.

When a woman gives birth to a child, the child needs to be able to digest the mother's milk; but when this child is old enough to begin to eat other foods, there is some switching off of this ability to consume milk.

This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not.

Drawings don't have a point. Cartoons, you want to have an opinion; you want them to express a viewpoint.

When something like personal genomics or synthetic biology suddenly appears - it seems to suddenly appear - we might have been working on it for 30 years, but it seems to come out of nowhere. Then you need strategies for engaging a lot of people and thinking about where it will be going in the next few months or few years.

Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.

It's the only way we can lose, irrespective of the result.

It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.

The Internet isn't just itself a revolution - it sometimes starts them, too.

Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.

I don't watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something gets you when you're alone and someone's voice is coming through their work. There's a different quality to it that stays with you a bit more.

Mature workers are less impulsive less reactive more creative and more centered.

I'm only interested in being a good actor and in being remembered for my best films, not for the way I look. But it seems inevitable in this line of work that I have to care about the way I look without getting obsessed about it.