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.

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.

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

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

In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

I'm very good at setting goals and deadlines for myself, so I don't really need that from outside.

If those of us who care about making our own decisions about what to read and what to think don't take a stand, others will decide for us.

The list of gifted teachers and librarians who find their jobs in jeopardy for defending their students' right to read, to imagine, to question, grows every year.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

I was wildly interested in puberty as a child.

I believe that 'The Artist' is the kind of movie you see and you don't forget. I know it's going to stay with me.

My father died when I was still in college, and it was sudden, and he was my beloved parent, and you just can't imagine what you life is going to be like.

Anybody who says, 'My childhood was completely happy,' is a person who isn't remembering the truth.

I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.

I never thought I wanted to write about the '50s, because I thought it was the most boring and bland decade to grow up in, and I never wanted to go back there.

I used to read about people who'd say, 'I dream my books, and then I write them down.' And I was like, 'Oh, please.'

My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!

My kids both had acne, and I never saw a book dealing with the subject.

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.

The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.

As a child who loved to read, I had trouble finding honest stories. I felt that adults were always keeping secrets from me, even in the books I was reading.

In 1970, somebody once asked me whether I thought my books would still be around in 40 years, and I thought, 'How would I know, and why would I care?' Well, it turns out I really do care.

My father was the youngest of seven, and nobody lived to be 60. And so we were always sitting shiva in my house, and my father would say, 'Life goes on.'