I think that books for young people should have serious and important themes, they shouldn't be trivial. So the books I write, they would be the kind of stories you would write in an adult novel only they just happen to feature a child at the center of them.

I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.

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

The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard.

War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.

Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.

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