“Where there is love there is life; where there is life there is hope.”

“Child, the more you want to hurry life up, the slower it gets.”

“Life doesn’t make sense. It’s against the law for somebody to steal your bike but apparently it doesn’t matter if somebody tries to steal your best friend. Well you can always get a new bike. But how do you replace a best friend”

“I like writing teen characters because they’re vulnerable to the newness of things; and vulnerability makes emotional responses raw, vital and unguarded. Lacking a context of consequences, choices are riskier and stakes higher. Life is lived without a safety net. As an author and reader, I find that a mighty charge to drama.”

“Save your anger to fight injustice. Forgive the rest.”

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be…gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier…it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book…”