The creative process; I enjoy thinking up the stories and situations for my books.

I was a fearful kid and, for some crazy reason, a pretty fearless writer.

When I see kids standing next to their mothers at book signings, clutching a copy of 'Forever,' I know what's coming. They'll say to me, 'How old do I have to be to read this?' hoping I'll give them permission. But I can't do that.

It's all about your determination, I think, as much as anything. There are a lot of people with talent, but it's that determination.

I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.

I can't relate to people who treat me as a 'famous person.' I only like to hang around with people who treat me as a regular person because that's what I am. All people are really just regular.

I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.

The women's movement was slow in coming to suburban New Jersey.

I'm an e-mail junkie though I'm trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once.

When I was first writing, my little prayers were, 'Please, please, please. Let something be published someday.' Then it went to, 'Please, please, please. Let somebody read this.'

When I'm writing a book, you can't think about your audience. You're going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You're got to write from deep inside.

In sixth grade, I made up books to give book reports on.

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!

Nobody talks about housewives anymore! This is what we were supposed to do in the '50s. Not everybody, but in my milieu. My crowd. You went to college, and you got a degree in case, God forbid, you ever had to work. And you better find somebody to marry while you're there, because otherwise, what's going to become of you?

I know it's working when I'm writing a book if I'm laughing or crying.

I loved 'Moneyball,' I thought that was a great Hollywood movie. I like baseball, but I don't know that you have to like baseball to like that. I thought it was really well done.

People need stories; they want stories. They always will.

I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.

I don't deal with writer's block, I don't allow myself to believe that there is such a thing. I think that there are good days and a lot more less good days.

I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.

A good writer is always a people watcher.

When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.

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.

I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!

Ideas seem to come from everywhere - my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination.

When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

I think people who write for kids, we have that ability to go back into our own lives.

I loved to read, and I think any child who loves to read will read anything, including the back of the cereal box, which I did every morning.

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.

I am a big defender of 'Harry Potter,' and I think any book that gets kids to read are books that we should cherish, we should be thankful for them.

The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

I meet people on the street or at book signings and they tend to treat me as if they know me, as if we're connected. It's great.

I love to watch movies.

I have the most loyal readers in the world.

It's good to have fantasies and creative fantasies, especially.

I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship when I felt totally alone in my fight to protect intellectual freedom, and that group changed my life. I was no longer alone.

When I was young, my parents had a library in our living room. I was always free to browse and read.

I wish I'd gone to a small liberal-arts college where I'd have read the great books instead of a large university where I majored in early-childhood education.

I am not sure that the inner world of teenage girls has changed. What's most important to kids today is still the same stuff.

I am very sentimental, very emotional, but never in my writing; I am very tough.

After each book, I get panicky. I don't love the reviews. I don't like going through all that, and you would think that, after almost 40 years of writing, I'd have got the hang of it.

Fear is contagious, and those who wish America to become a faith-based society are doing their best to spread it.

I don't want to repeat myself.

By the time I was 12, I was reading my parents' books because there weren't teenage books then.

I'm thinking of sending out censorship packets: information to share with those who want to defend my books when they come under fire. I'll tell why I wrote them and include reviews and letters of support from children and their parents.

I think divorce is a tragedy, traumatic and horribly painful for everybody. That's why I wrote 'Smart Women.' I want kids to read that and to think what life might be like for their parents. And I want parents to think about what life is like for their kids.

A novel is about people.

I'm never doing a long novel again, truly.

My husband is a feminist!