... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.

In his heart, he knew that there was no reason to be impolite to someone, even if they did work for you. There was such a thing as manners after all.

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

...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.

With the adult ones, I feel I need to get as deep inside the psychology of a character as I can, and that needs to be first-person. In the children's books, I feel I need some distance. I don't want to be the nine-year-old at the center of the story. I need to have some type of narrative voice.

We all are [normal]. Their idea of normal just happens to be different to some other people's idea of normal. But this is the world we live in. Some people simply cannot accept something that is outside of their experience.

It occurs to me that even though Zoya and I are both still alive, my life is already over. She will be taken from me soon and there will be no reason for me to continue without her. We are one person, you see. We are GeorgyandZoya.