"The reasons for censorship reflect the social climate of the times. The publisher of Debutante Hill asked me to revise the manuscript because I had a 19-year-old boy drink a beer. When I changed the beer to a Coke, the book was published and won the ‘Seventeenth Summer Literary Award.’"

“The subject matter of today's youth novels has no boundaries. The only taboo seems to be sex discrimination... I can only guess about where we're going, but I think we have come about as far as we can in the direction of 'let-it-all-hang-out' realism. My reader-mail indicates that kids are beginning to feel bogged down with so much depressing slice-of-life. My own most successful books have been those that were high in entertainment value, especially those touching on the supernatural.”

“Killing Mr. Griffin doesn't encourage violence in schools any more than the story of Cain and Able encourages children to kill their younger brothers.”

“The books I loved most as a child were those that contained elements of magic—the whole series of Oz books, Mary Poppins, The Princess and the Goblin—I could name them indefinitely.”

“A movie loosely based upon my novel, I Know What You Did Last Summer, opened in theaters around the country. I was ecstatic until I settled into a theater seat with my box of popcorn and discovered that Hollywood had turned my teenage suspense story into a slasher film. The setting had been changed from the mountains of New Mexico to a fishing village on the East Coast, so an insane fisherman, who wasn't in my book, could decapitate my characters with an ice hook. The first thing I did after leaving the theater was phone our daughter Kerry and warn her not to let the grandchildren see it.”

“I cannot remember a time when I did not consider myself a writer.”

“It came naturally. I came from a family of strong women.”