I hate this guy,” Ari muttered, keeping his head down “There’s a club,” I told him. “The Haters of ter Borcht Club. Have you gotten your badge yet?

If the White House could do more to tell parents that getting children reading is their business too, we'd see a big difference. Hollywood and the NBA or NFL could step in, too. In England they have an event called Book Day, where every child receives a pound to use at any bookstore.

Dead Max was the biggest oxymoron in history.

Every other person in the world would have looked at it and thought, Max would hate this. It was girly. It was beautiful. It wasn't made of titanium and black leather with spikes on it. But it seemed exactly right, in a weird, heart-fluttery kind of way. And I really loved it.

It's always refreshing to meet someone crazier than us," I said. "We seem so normal afterward.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.

Sometimes being a leader isn’t about winning. Sometimes it’s about doing what’s right, instead of what’s powerful.