Bruno: "Why do you wear pajamas all day?" Shmuel: "The soldiers. They took all our clothes away." Bruno: "My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away."

The dot that became a speck that became a blob that became a figure that became a boy

Their lost voices must continue to be heard.

Bruno: "Why do you wear pajamas all day?" Shmuel: "The soldiers. They took all our clothes away." Bruno: "My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away."

Unless you're very boring, I think most people who've lived long enough have something in their past which will never go away. As a writer, my interest has become in writing about much more emotional, personal topics. I'm trying to reach into subjects I have never written about before.

I hope for so much from every book I read. And time and again, I find myself disappointed. I look across my bookshelves and see hundreds of titles which in my memory seem merely mediocre or second-rate. Only occasionally does a novel appear for which I feel a lasting passion, a book that I think could in time become a classic.

He looked the boy up and down as if he had never seen a child before and wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do with one: eat it, ignore it or kick it down the stairs.