Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story.

I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

It can be demonstrated from history that no society has ever survived after its family life deteriorated.

Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.

Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence.

Girls are really looking to places that have limits and boundaries: where adults are the adults and there are rules, and where they feel safe.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.

Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.

Margie Flynn was in my head like a bad cold, blurring everything. It was a new kind of loneliness, a hurt I couldn’t stop picking at.

I always felt that the great high privilege relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

I love the sounds and the power of pounding water, whether it is the waves or a waterfall.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Since its very inception, Israel has been a threat.

Republicans have called for a National African-American Museum. The plan is being held up by finding a location that isn't in their neighborhood.

Each work is a surprise and has its own personal and intuitive meaning.

A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!" It was taken around the ring "Usal gives moisture to the dead!" He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.

The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?

Don't confuse facts with reality.