As a child who loved to read, I had trouble finding honest stories. I felt that adults were always keeping secrets from me, even in the books I was reading.

The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.

I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.

My kids both had acne, and I never saw a book dealing with the subject.

My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!

I used to read about people who'd say, 'I dream my books, and then I write them down.' And I was like, 'Oh, please.'

I never thought I wanted to write about the '50s, because I thought it was the most boring and bland decade to grow up in, and I never wanted to go back there.

I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.

Anybody who says, 'My childhood was completely happy,' is a person who isn't remembering the truth.

My father died when I was still in college, and it was sudden, and he was my beloved parent, and you just can't imagine what you life is going to be like.

I believe that 'The Artist' is the kind of movie you see and you don't forget. I know it's going to stay with me.

I was wildly interested in puberty as a child.

When I was growing up, I dreamed about becoming a cowgirl, a detective, a spy, a great actress, or a ballerina. Not a dentist, like my father, or a homemaker, like my mother - and certainly not a writer, although I always loved to read.

The list of gifted teachers and librarians who find their jobs in jeopardy for defending their students' right to read, to imagine, to question, grows every year.

If those of us who care about making our own decisions about what to read and what to think don't take a stand, others will decide for us.

I'm very good at setting goals and deadlines for myself, so I don't really need that from outside.

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.

The creative process; I enjoy thinking up the stories and situations for my books.

I was a fearful kid and, for some crazy reason, a pretty fearless writer.

When I see kids standing next to their mothers at book signings, clutching a copy of 'Forever,' I know what's coming. They'll say to me, 'How old do I have to be to read this?' hoping I'll give them permission. But I can't do that.

It's all about your determination, I think, as much as anything. There are a lot of people with talent, but it's that determination.

I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.

I can't relate to people who treat me as a 'famous person.' I only like to hang around with people who treat me as a regular person because that's what I am. All people are really just regular.

I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.

The women's movement was slow in coming to suburban New Jersey.

I'm an e-mail junkie though I'm trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once.

When I was first writing, my little prayers were, 'Please, please, please. Let something be published someday.' Then it went to, 'Please, please, please. Let somebody read this.'

When I'm writing a book, you can't think about your audience. You're going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You're got to write from deep inside.

In sixth grade, I made up books to give book reports on.

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

Nobody talks about housewives anymore! This is what we were supposed to do in the '50s. Not everybody, but in my milieu. My crowd. You went to college, and you got a degree in case, God forbid, you ever had to work. And you better find somebody to marry while you're there, because otherwise, what's going to become of you?

I know it's working when I'm writing a book if I'm laughing or crying.

I loved 'Moneyball,' I thought that was a great Hollywood movie. I like baseball, but I don't know that you have to like baseball to like that. I thought it was really well done.

People need stories; they want stories. They always will.

I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.

I don't deal with writer's block, I don't allow myself to believe that there is such a thing. I think that there are good days and a lot more less good days.

I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.

A good writer is always a people watcher.

When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I'm happy to say, is - they're the 'Betsy-Tacy' books.

What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.

I'm really quite bad at coming up with plot ideas. I like to create characters and just see what will happen to them when I let them loose!

Ideas seem to come from everywhere - my life, everything I see, hear, and read, and most of all, from my imagination. I have a lot of imagination.

When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

I think people who write for kids, we have that ability to go back into our own lives.

I loved to read, and I think any child who loves to read will read anything, including the back of the cereal box, which I did every morning.

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.

I am a big defender of 'Harry Potter,' and I think any book that gets kids to read are books that we should cherish, we should be thankful for them.

The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.