“There were just things in Disney movies that probably were too scary for kids.”

“(on fox news)…. it's like watching a Disney movie about the news.”

“Mexican kids were now speaking quite a bit of English. Even Ramón. But he was a changed kid. There was a darkness in his eyes like a horse that had just been beaten one too many times.”

“The audience is equally responsible for making Scary Movie 3 as the studio system is because as long as they continue to go see Fast and Furious 4, they're going to make it. You have to remember that studio heads went to NYU and stuff and film school and they wanted to make great films and were seduced by The Godfather and instead, this is the world that were in.”

“The blackbirds are in this book, they're both pro the kids and against the kids. Just like fate. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes… and also a blackbird is from my passion for Schubert songs and his blackbirds and his birds of doom or birds of good. … some people were baffled that in the last big picture of that book, there's a crucifix on the wall of the children's house. Everybody assumes the hero and heroine are Jewish and the mother is Jewish. They're not. They're not. — That was my point. Those kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And all children were in the Holocaust. Everybody was in the Holocaust. So, I made sure my hero and heroine were not Jewish children. That was too easy. That was too easy.”

“It's a scary thing; moving on. Part of me wishes life were more predictable and part of me is excited that it's not. I think it's impossible to tell the good things from the bad things while they're happening.”

“Teaching kids to become something other than what they were born to be is probably impossible; teaching them to behave in ways that seem unnatural to them at the start is actually not that hard.”

“The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is it's too easy.”

“Susan, an only child who never had any roots, and I, a lone wolf who got married 20 years too late, were adopted by the kids as much as they were by us.”

“If you were smart, you'd probably spend more time stretching, he said & I said, If I were really smart, I'd probably spend more time just sitting in the shade drinking lemonade.”