Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.

I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults.

There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.

There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.

When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another.

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.

The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.

You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next.

It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.

The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story.

The sound of the king's music made Despereaux's soul grow large and light inside of him.

I never quite understood the question that says, is the glass half empty or half full? What’s the difference? Eventually it’ll end up empty and in the trash.

There's nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart.

Emotions tend to get in the way of a good argument.

When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit, as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a dead and rotten thing.

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization

[Congress] can just make [Mitt] Romney president. And we'd be like, "All right, fine."

I find anthropology is a marvellous discipline to shock me out of my own world into another world.

It actually took me a year to learn how to play running back - to understand what they were doing defensively and then what our guys were doing every single play.

Among modern occupations, only cult leaders and TV weathermen rival the technological visionary's ability to retain credibility despite all evidence to the contrary.