“Forgive me....I called you an idiot. I spoke too hastily. You are not. Had I given it more thought, I would have called you a scoundrel.”

“I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.”

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”

“I, too, shall seek honor. But I shall seek it where I know it will be found.”

“The art is more important than the artist. The work is more important than the person who does it. You must be prepared to sacrifice all the you could possibly have, be, or do; you must be willing to go all the way for your art. If it is a question between choosing between your life and a work of art -- any work of art -- your decision is made for you.”

“Every living thing deserves our respect... be it humble or proud, ugly or beautiful.”

“A taste for adventure is by no means a masculine monopoly.”

“All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts. ”

“When imagination fails, compassion and humaneness dwindle and atrophy along with it. Unleavened by imagination, the variety and richness of life turn into flat abstractions; people become objects to be manipulated -- with the social consequences we know all too well.”

“The vitality of art is its capacity for infinite expansion. One form doesn't preclude another any more than the existence of Mozart makes the existence of Bach superfluous.”

“Children may not understand all that's happening below the surface of a story. It doesn't matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there's something more than meets the eye; on an almost subliminal level, they're aware of a richness of texture, or meaning and emotion -- a richness that, in a great book, is inexhaustible. And the child may well come back to it again and again, perhaps long after he's stopped being a child.”