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" 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. "

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

" My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands. "

" I wish I'd gone to a small liberal-arts college where I'd have read the great books instead of a large university where I majored in early-childhood education. "

" At the time I wrote 'Forever,' I had a 14-year-old daughter, and she was reading a lot of books about young love. "

" 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. "

" Everything they say a girl should get from her father in terms of total acceptance and love, I got all that from my father. But then I married a man just like my mother - so phlegmatic. "

" Fear is contagious, and those who wish America to become a faith-based society are doing their best to spread it. "

" My mother's mantra was, 'How would it look to the neighbors?' And so you don't do anything because you're worried about how it would look to the neighbors. "

" Everybody wants to share life and be in love and be loved. "

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

" 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. "

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

" When a parent comes into school waving a book and saying, 'Take this book away. I don't like this book.' I won't say in all cases, but in many cases, that will not happen anymore. It has to go through a proper review board. The complaining parent will have to fill out a complaint, you know, put it in writing. "

" I'm phobic about thunderstorms. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm an optimistic person, so I like to leave my readers with a sense of hopefulness. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In 1970, somebody once asked me whether I thought my books would still be around in 40 years, and I thought, 'How would I know, and why would I care?' Well, it turns out I really do care. "

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

" Parents still have a big influence on their kids - just ask any therapist. No, really, I think the parent is the most important influence on children: It's how they learn to love and treat other people. "

" We're supposed to be uncomfortable when we read something. That's how we learn. "

" I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, 'Judy, we need a title.' "

" My mother told me once that she had her talk with God whenever she started a new sweater: 'Please don't take me in the middle of the sweater.' And as soon as she finished knitting a sweater, and it was blocked and put together, she already had the wool to start the next sweater so that nothing bad would happen. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

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

" When I'm writing, I'm never trying to teach anything - maybe I'm trying to illuminate. "

" My father was the youngest of seven, and nobody lived to be 60. And so we were always sitting shiva in my house, and my father would say, 'Life goes on.' "