Paul Fleischman

“The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent's idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm.”

“Warming is incontrovertible, so in general, you're going to have more droughts, more fires. So I think events like that are the best thing that could happen for righting our ship and getting us on a safer course.”

“I should tell you that many people think that authors just cut and paste from real life into books. It doesn't work quite that way.”

“Science explains what nature is doing; money often explains what we're doing.”

“What could be more exciting when the writing is going well and things are falling into place? It's just like riding a fabulous wave for a surfer. There's no better place to be.”

“I'm a very careful, slow writer, and I think a lot of that comes from the care required to be a hand-printer, where if something isn't spaced out enough, you take little slivers of brass or copper and put them between each letter.”

“A picture tells a thousand words. But you get a thousand pictures from someone's voice.”

“I grew up in a house that might have had the only front-yard cornfield in all of Los Angeles.”

“I actually went on a vegan diet. So I was nagging myself there. I don't nag other people about it. It was sort of an interesting experiment, and I found it wasn't that hard at all.”

“People don't like to be nagged. When people nag us, we instantly resist, but when the facts force us in that same direction, we instantly adapt.”

“Parents should keep 'Eyes Wide Open' next to the 'Kinsey Report' on their shelves.”

“The few words of a title are the hardest words for any author to come up with.”