It is possible, you know, to drift off to an unknown world and find happiness there. Maybe even more happiness than you've ever known before.

You’re my best friend, Shmuel,’ he said. ‘My best friend for life.

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.

Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that?

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.

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.

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.