Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.

The name we give to something shapes our attitude toward it.

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading.

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into ice cream?

As much pleasure as young people get from Twittering and texting, there is no way these activities will nourish their minds and spirits the way literature can.

Reading can be a road to freedom or a key to a secret garden, which, if tended, will transform all of life.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

Some folks are natural born kickers. They can always find a way to turn disaster into butter.

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

Her metaphors for her children included barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock.

. . . what is thought now, and held to be universal truth, was not thought then, or true of that time.

When a person becomes aware of their genius and they live it and they give generously from it, they change the world, they affect the world. And when they depart everyone knows something is missing.

We are living in glorious days where each readers' voice can be heard.

How did it make you feel?

Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it meant to live.We don't know how to live,therefore we don't know how to die

Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want.

I don't have much history - I've got Rosie Perez, Jennifer Lopez, Rita Moreno. That's it. That's the history of Latin women in Hollywood, really.

You change people by delight, by pleasure.