Quotes from Marissa Moss

Not only is writing more important than ever, but visual literacy is vital. We don't teach enough design, art, visual things. We have to recognize what we're seeing. It matters if you send someone a cluttered design. It matters more than ever.

My memories of being nine or ten years old are especially vivid, since this is the time when you have a real sense of who you are - before the self-conscious preteen years start.

With the big publishers, they publish 50 books and promote five.

Amelia shows that it's not what happens in life that counts, but rather how you frame it, how you talk about it.

More than conventional picture books, the notebook format allows me to leap from words to images, and this free-flowing back-and-forth inspires my best work. It reflects the way I think - sometimes visually, sometimes verbally - with the pictures not there just to illustrate the text but to replace it, to tell their own story.

Writing is hard, hard work; that's just the way it is.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

I sat down and wrote what I remembered about being nine, and that eventually became 'Amelia's Notebook.'

Long before 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Dork Diaries', and the graphic novel explosion, only a small press like Tricycle was willing to take a risk on such an innovative format.

Ages ago, when I published 'Amelia's Notebook,' I'd sent it to traditional publishers I'd been working with, but nobody knew what to do with it. Tricycle was this small publisher who didn't know any better, and they took a chance.

New York publishing is about, 'What's the next Harry Potter? What's the next Twilight?' When I've approached people, I've asked, 'What is the book you've been dying to do, but New York won't do?' I want the books that they think won't sell - because I think they will.

I loved playing with the mix of fantastical inventions and real ones. I hope kids will start logbooks to record their own creations.

Notebooks allow for all kinds of record-keeping, and I kept one myself as a kid. I was attracted to mixing up words and pictures freely, since that's how I think.

It is often while you are looking for something else entirely that you make the most amazing finds.

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

It is often while you are looking for something else entirely that you make the most amazing finds.

It all made me realize I wasn't the only one who wasn't sure they belonged. There was no one right way to fit in--it seemed like everyone was finding their own place, even if that place was on the edge of things. Still, there had to be ways to make it easier.

what is it like to have a dad?

One bloody battle followed another. Sometimes the North won, sometimes the South, but always the soldiers lost, thousands of them dying or maimed.

A wink is like no other gesture. It's like a secret smile, a whisper with your face.

I can't change Mr. L., but I can change how I think of him. If I don't care about his opinion, his insults can't hurt me.

It might be nice to need glasses because when you take them off, the world becomes a nice, big blur. There's something safe and cozy about that.