Quotes from Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Eleven would have been the best time. Eleven is just about the best age for almost everything.

Nothing's real unless you want it to be, and anything can be real if you want it to enough; so real doesn't really mean anything.

Teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with ten or eleven years of experience as human beings. It is, I think, a magical time - when so much has been learned, but not yet enough to entirely extinguish the magical reach and freedom of early childhood.

Writing for children hadn't occurred to me when I was younger, but nine years of teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with 10 or 11 years of experience as human beings.

I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.