Children are less easily frightened than we are.... they all understand princesses, of course. Haven't they all been badly bruised by peas?

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.

Like everything else" - Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads - "it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school.

Our children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, "If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it.

Someone said, 'It's all been done before.'Yes, I agreed, but we all have to say it in our own voice.

Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.

How do we teach a child--our own, or those in a classroom--to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have--or need--answers.