Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel.

The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after.

I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers.

Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.

It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything.

It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.

Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.