The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.

And I have tried to forget him, I have tried to convince myself that it was just one of those things, but it’s difficult to do that when my body is standing here, eight feet deep in the earth of northern France, while my heart remains by a stream in a clearing in England where I left it weeks ago.

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."

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

What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?

Children's book writers tend to feel quite superior, and adult writers tend to feel they wouldn't know how to write a children's book - which might surprise you because I think a lot of people think it's the other way around.

Sitting around miserable all day won't make you any happier.