“When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain...” — Nancy Garden Quote

When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain for books about my people. I did find some paperbacks with lurid covers in the local bus station, but they ended with the gay character's committing suicide, dying in a car crash, being sent to a mental hospital, or 'turning' heterosexual.

My writing books with positive gay characters has come more out of anger than anything else: anger at not having been able to find honest, accurate books about people like myself as a teen, books that show we're as diverse as straight people and that we can lead happy, healthy, productive lives just as straight people can.

I think kids in every minority need to see people like themselves in books; that's an acknowledgment of their existence on this planet and in this society.

I write for young people because I like them and because I think they are important. Children's books can be mind-stretchers and imagination-ticklers and builders of good taste in a way that adult books cannot, because young people usually come to books with more open minds. It's exciting to be able to contribute to that in a small way.

I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.

Looking back on my career, some of the hardest times - eight people at a show, 12 people on a bus - were some of the most fun.

If Rosa Parks had not refused to move to the back of the bus, you and I might never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Hillbilly Rock' was the song that opened the door and gave me a reason to get a bus and a band and cowboy clothes to go out there and figure it out in front of everybody. And the hits started coming.