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An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

In my youth, I found that I was quite often inspired and pushed forward by what I read.

I like to encourage young talented writers to try and help them get published and so forth, but that's all. That's the best I can do.

To me, the pinnacle of my career is writing for youth. I can die happy: I have succeeded in doing what I have always wanted to do.

No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

You say that you hope I will be recognized as the best novelist of my generation. I want you to know now and know completely that that would mean to me absolutely nothing.

You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.