Quote

If I could give a shout-out to anything in the childhood world, I have to say 'Daniel Tiger.' I want to write a love letter to everyone on that staff. It is so perfectly, thoughtfully, lovingly done. And as a parent, it is the one thing out of everything that we dip in to that really helps.

Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'

I have a six-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter, so I write when they are at school and pre-school, or when I have a babysitter.

I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.

I don't know how to write love letters.

It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere.

I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee.

Well, I always wanted to write from the time I was very little, and my mother encouraged me. She wrote a journal from the time she was 15 up until about the age of 76.

Right now, writing for me is most rewarding because I'm old enough now to have something to say, which probably wasn't always the case.