Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?’ I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. ‘What irony?’ I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. ‘That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.

(J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.

Do you see the irony at all, Tristan?’ I stare at him and shake my head. He seems determined not to speak again until I do. ‘What irony?’ I ask eventually, the words tumbling out in a hurried heap. ‘That I am to be shot as a coward while you get to live as one.

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

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

But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.

I started reading Dickens when I was about 12, and I particularly liked all of the orphan books. I always liked books about young people who are left on their own with the world, and the four children's books I've written feature that very thing: children that are abandoned by their families or running away from their families or ignored by their families and having to grow up quicker than they should, like David Copperfield - having to be the hero of their own story.