I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

Figuring out how to eat healthfully on your own without your parents' guidance is one of the hardest lessons you must learn when you leave home for college.

My family was very poor. Strangely, though, my father was an enigma in that he was always working. He was not a ne'er-do-well. He wasn't lazy. He just couldn't hold on to money. It just, it was an enigma for him. He just, his pockets were always empty.

The Golden Rule of Parenting is; do unto your children as you wish your parents had done unto you!

I am a workaholic - my family will agree with that.