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" 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! "

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" I was so inspired by Beverly Cleary's funny and wonderful books. "

" 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.' "

" I have a great T-shirt that I received at the New Jersey Hall of Fame when I was inducted. It says - it makes me choke up - it says, 'I'm a Jersey tomato'... I am. I am a Jersey girl and proud of it. "

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

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

" I think the child I was until 12 was so much more interesting than the teenager I became. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I began to write and used a typewriter, I went through three drafts of a book before showing it to an editor. "

" 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. "

" When I was growing up in the 1950s, sweaters were a huge thing. "

" I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship when I felt totally alone in my fight to protect intellectual freedom, and that group changed my life. I was no longer alone. "

" I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen. "

" Many of my books are set in New Jersey because that's where I was born and raised. I lived there until my kids finished elementary school. Then we moved to New Mexico, the setting for 'Tiger Eyes.' "

" I'm never doing a long novel again, truly. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear. "

" I still have such a thing for leather jackets. I have a closet full of them, and my husband is always saying to me, 'Why do you need another jacket? You have plenty of jackets.' "

" I'm not the world's best mother, though kids always assume I must be. "

" I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I can't read fiction when I'm writing fiction, because I get intimidated if I read something really good. "