“I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me.”

Moments are history. If you have enough of them, they become a story.

People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother’s house.

I loved to read, still do, and it seemed that the writing was a result of the love of books and reading and libraries.

Maybe a first love exists to remind you to be brave in the moment, to stand up for your feelings, instead of shrinking back in the face of potential loneliness.

Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on.

I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.

You have work anytime. But love? Not always.

A good mother is irreplaceable.

The only urgent thing in life is the pursuit of love. You get that one right, and you’ve solved the mystery.

This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships – they can’t. It interferes.

A library is a home filled with our stories.

There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you’d had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting.

Two different things. Work is survival, and love sustains you.

I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.

But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened.

I wish I was the kind who made up stories.

It comes to the one who rests upon the promises of the Word. It comes to the man who lives by faith as if in the actual possession of the answer to his prayer, although the enemy is still around him.

Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.

One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.

As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?

When I get there I am not going to be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Moses? Why weren’t you David?’ I am only going to be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Zuscha? Why weren’t you fully you?'”

The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will – that is really naive.

People will ask me, “How do you approach writing books for young readers differently than for adults?” My answer is always: I don’t change anything about the story itself.

More data is not always the answer.