The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford is an astonishing building, designed by Christopher Wren. Its painted ceiling has just been restored so that the darkish miasma that was Robert Streeter's original allegory of truth and light striking the university is now bright with playful cherubs and lustrous clouds.

I thought I'd write a massive postmodern novel about Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood, but it turns out they couldn't have met because the first mention of Robin Hood appears 60 years after Richard died.

As Eric Weitz argues, the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was not responsible for the Reich; it was a democratic, socially aware and progressive government, way ahead of many other European governments in its introduction of workers' rights, public housing, unemployment benefit and suffrage for women.

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

A novel is about people.

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.

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.

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

I don't want to repeat myself.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

I have the most loyal readers in the world.

I love to watch movies.

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.

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 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.

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 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.