Kerri and I met at theatre camp when were 16 years old, which is pretty lame. The rest of us met when we founded the State at New York University in 1988. Most of our adult lives have been spent bickering with these people.
As voters and taxpayers, we must demand that our local governments properly prioritize libraries. As citizens, we must invest in our library down the street so that the generations served by that library grow up to be adults who contribute not just t...
I actually started an adult book, worked on it for about two years, and then decided it just wasn't coming together for me, and thought I'll go back to children's books, and almost immediately I started 'Holes,' and it just seemed to take off on me.
I remember thinking that people were crazy for reading the same book more than once, but I now have a new-found appreciation for the re-discovery of literature. The lessons we learned from books in the school curriculum are reinvented and updated whe...
It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.
For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.
Life is all about the friendship and the love and the music. It sounds silly, but it is. I want to have that experience as much as I can as an adult, not as a kid doing something that people are telling her she has to do. If anyone gets in my way, I'...
I think President Obama wanted to have the right fit for his different cabinet positions, and I believe that experience is what mattered most to him. In my case, I have been working to improve the overall quality of life for working families for most...
I believe that hunger for a 'lost dimension' of experience is a natural yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the 'Harry...
We're adults. We're the ones who should teach the kids what's good to eat. I don't think the government should ever regulate what we eat at home, but we're feeding them in school with tax dollars. Quite frankly, if my tax dollars are being spent to f...
I'm still very connected to my family, to the world I grew up in. I understand what it means to be afraid that you can't pay a doctor's bill. Or to have to make the choice between buying a band uniform for a seventh-grader and making the insurance pa...
My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, step-children, dysfunction, and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life ...
I had seen the ballet of 'Swan Lake' as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace...
I don't know much about Britain. I've been working overseas for most of my adult life. So I'd like to see what sort of problems there really are here. It's a question of asking, 'Where are we going, how purposeful are we?' And see if there's anything...
I don't think my dad really knew what to do with me, as a daughter. He treated me like a boy; my brother and I were treated the same. He didn't do kid stuff. There were no kid's menus; you weren't allowed to order off the kid's menu at dinner - we ha...
Our great problem, is that children now know whatever they want to know - at the press of a button they can discover all horrors of the adult world. They know very early on that the world is sometimes a very dark, difficult and complex place, and the...
We're good at taking care of little kids, and spend a lot of energy teaching them things like how to read. But when kids get as tall as their parents and can look them in the eyes, we tend to drop the ball - at a time they most need a loving consiste...
Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount...
I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the ...
Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it migh...
I write what I like to read, and I enjoy love triangles in YA and adult fiction - not to mention in other media like TV, opera, theatre, and even in video games! I relish when dark and compelling characters compete for our protagonist's heart. The do...
