Beverly Cleary

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.

I grew up before there were strict leash laws.

I feel sometimes that in children's books there are more and more grim problems, but I don't know that I want to burden third- and fourth-graders with them.

I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.