#Age

"When I read 'Stand By Me,' it was like, 'This is a look back at the same time period when I was growing up, and it was about kids, but it really felt like what it was like to have those powerful feelings of friendship at age 12.' That's what got to me."

"In the age of technology there is constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows; people get overwhelmed; the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on."

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

"I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in."

"When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick."

"I wanted to write a very simple story about a boy, a wolf, a girl, a bear and a forest, so I thought I might set it in the past. I didn't realise that it went back to when I was 10: I used to love the Stone Age when I was a kid and wanted to live in it, and I got rid of my bed and slept on the floor, but I didn't remember it."

"We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still."

"Clutching to your fading youth is like trying to hang on to a handful of smoke. Just breathe deeply and you’ll be OK."

"I sacrificed a lot, in terms of friendship and family, from working so much at such a young age, but I wouldn't be where I am if I hadn't."

"The last 33 years of my life have been a blur, like a hummingbird’s beating wings. Time flies, but not backwards, like a hummingbird can."