“She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”

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

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.

In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships!

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

I hope children will be happy with the books I’ve written, and go on to be readers all of their lives.

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house.

People are usually surprised to hear this, but I don’t really read children’s books.

What interests me is what children go through while growing up.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We’re growing old. It’s getting late.

If we wait for conditions to go from good to perfect, we’ll just be waiting, waiting, waiting.

I’ll never be bothered if I don’t have a hit because you look at the songs that are hits and they’re none of my favourites. Just the fact that we do have fans waiting here, that’s exciting enough.

You choose happiness. You don’t wait for it to choose you.

You can’t make decisions if there are no charges or issues to deal with. So it’s quite normal to wait until there is some reason to react.

I don’t mind it. I just space it out. Every other week I go out. I used to get some time to myself but I’ve been pretty busy lately. But I’ve had it the other way, where I’m staring at the phone waiting for it to ring, so this is definitely better.

The role of the comedian is to say ‘Wait a minute’ when a consensus starts to form.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.