All of us can think of a book that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

A great novel is a kind of conversion experience. We come away from it changed.

...I write for the child I was and the child I still am. Like countless other lucky adults, I have much in common with children. We daydream, wonder, exaggerate, ask "what if?"--and what we imagine sometimes is more true than what is. We like to play with squishy things--mud, clay, dough, words--and we make stuff out of them. We like kids, animals ( Read more... )

...We marvel at a man like Nelson Mandela. How was he able to walk out of prison after twenty-seven years of torture and humiliation and lead a tortured and humiliated people into a nation that sought justice without vengeance? If ever we despair of the human race, here is a man who can inspire us once again to hope.

"But didn't you hate ( Read more... )