I like reading books about kids where there weren't really many adults, where they didn't need an adult to come and solve the problems for them. They could use their own ingenuity, use their own talents to solve whatever the issue was. And I like that still. I think that children want to read about heroic children. They don't want to read about children that have to be saved all the time.

I like the idea of standalone novels. I always found with series of books, it's something that publishers love obviously because they can make a lot of money and they build an audience from book to book, but I don't like that as a writer. I prefer the idea of just telling a story, completing it within your book, and moving on and not forcing a child to read eight of them.

I was dropped by my publisher after my first two books. But I always believed in myself.

What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

Well you've been brought here against your will, just like I have. If you ask me, we're all in the same boat. And it's leaking.

Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.

There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.