“Chapter books were my salvation, in the same way as Jesus was for other kids. Our family was always broke, but my parents always shelled out our version of a monthly bar bill for Scholastic paperbacks. Thank you, Astrid Lindgren; when you gave us Pippi Longstocking, you gave me life. I read the book like I read the first issue of Ms. magazine ten years later. The experience was like Helen Keller breaking the code for the word ‘water.’ I wanted to race around spreading the good news. I could breathe again, forever. There was going to be a spot for me in this joint, the earth, after all. It was never going to be a great match for someone as bright and strange as me, but books were going to make it survivable.”

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“Here is my theory: I am all the ages I’ve ever been. You realize this at some point about your child—even when your kid is sixteen, you can see all the ages in him, the baby wrapped up like a burrito, the one-year-old about to walk, the four-year-old napping, the ten-year-old on a trampoline.”

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“Keep your butt on the chair. You do it at the same time every day. You never wait for inspiration. It’s ridiculous. It will never come. It’s another way to keep you from writing…and you have to do it badly…Everything I’ve written that anyone might think is helpful was four pages longer and very purple and overwrought.”

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