I think I know what it's like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.

Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.

When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything

Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.

Everyone's got a different story.

It's all real in Outside, everything there is, because I saw an airplane in the blue between the clouds. Ma and me can't go there because we don't know the secret code, but it's real all the same. Before I didn't know to be mad that we can't open Door, my head was too small to have Outside in it.

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.