I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized.

I just want to say, if you're going crazy, take a break. I felt overwhelmed by stuff that wasn't satisfying me, things I was supposed to do for my career. I stopped and said, 'Let me get back to the basics.'

I'm realizing now that I was always really curious about inviting people into a space and sharing information that way. But I didn't have any context for it. It was just fun because I was homeschooled and lonely and bored, and I'd do things to get people to come over.

Your sanity is harder to get back than money or contacts. You are the magic. You are the art. You can't lose that.

Now that we've discovered how to actually develop policies and projects holistically, if we can get the barriers out of the way and release the creativity that's in our universities, our farming organizations, amongst our farmers and land managers, we'll be astounded. As I'd like to express it, the human spirit will fly.

To come to grips with creativity, I must ask creative, adventurous questions - the kind which, in all likelihood, cannot be answered.

Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does.

I resisted children's writing for a long time. I saw myself as a writer of literary fiction. But I had so much more fun writing kids' books.