I'm a wicked ping-pong player.

In every thriller written about Washington, particularly after 9/11, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and there's no gray area at all.

Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?

I'm scattered, and then that last hundred pages, bam, I'm a laser.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

It's not the beginning or the destination that counts. It's the ride in between.

Libraries rock! Not a sermon, just a fact. As a kid I was a library rat and books changed my life. They can change yours.

Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.

Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

Two people can care for each other but not want the same things.

When a poor man gives something, that is a sacrifice indeed. When a rich man gives something, it hardly rises to the same level.

People sell their soul in such small quantities - a seemingly trivial compromise here, a rationalization of a minor evil there - that they don't realize what they're doing until it is too late.

When I looked at myself through the prism of awareness, great tears came as I connected with how this wounded child felt.

A focused Board concentrates on strategy oversight and governance practices, to avoid getting lost in the forest.

We declare that love is the cause of the existence of all phenomena and that the absence of love is the cause of disintegration or non-existence.

Don't be reckless with other peoples hearts. And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.

When you love others you aren't nervous.

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death.

Making mistakes is a way of taking action.

I don't go to see movies to see plots. I'm not interested in puzzles like an Agatha Christie story.

I know that I'll be writing for young adults for a long time. Mostly because I just love the readers and the teachers and librarians that I interact with.