“I am not a pest,” Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus.”

Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.

When things [writing] are over, I always think, ‘well, I’m never going to do anything again because I have no ideas so I’m going to go be a farmer’. Or else ideas will come and and if not then I become a farmer. Hopefully won’t happen.

I wanted to be a ballerina. I changed my mind.

Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents’ Night.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

I have lovely memories of Los Angeles in the 1930s. I came down to live with my mother’s cousin and they invited me to come and go to junior college for a year.

The key to writing successful YA is to keep the adults out of the story as much as possible.

I didn’t start out writing to give children hope, but I’m glad some of them found it.

He was dressed as if everything he wore had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except that the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.

Problem solving, and I don’t mean algebra, seems to be my life’s work. Maybe it’s everyone’s life’s work.

I was an only child; I didn’t have a sister, or sisters.

I just wrote about childhood as I had known it.

Today I discovered two kinds of people who go to high school: those who wear new clothes to show off on the first day, and those who wear their oldest clothes to show they think school is unimportant.

Children want to do what grownups do.

She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.

The Internet’s a big enough place for everybody to be happy.

When we [Bayern] were in China people knew us but Bayern were not so big in America.

I really love big scarves. I have a whole bunch.

I’m just the smallest dot in a big map of human history.

You know, 10 years ago I never thought I’d be in this position. It’s a dream and I don’t even know if I dreamed this big.

She was wonderful – just a kind, big-hearted, filthy girl. Somehow she could be vulgar without being vulgar.

A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.

How can you know God if you don’t know your big toe?