Quotes

Ironically, it was my students who taught me to be a writer, though I had been hired to teach them. They taught me that a novel must entertain first before it can be anything else. I learned that there is no such thing as a 'grade reading level'; a young person's 'reading level' and attention span will rise and fall according to his degree of interest. I learned that if you do not have a happy ending for the young, you had better do some fast talking.

I could never be Mark Twain, but I will die trying.

I'm a writer because I never had a teacher who said, "Write what you know." If I'd been limited to writing what I know, I would have produced one unpublishable haiku. Beatrix Potter was never a rabbit. J. K. Rowling did not attend Hogwarts School.