The mind can’t explain it, and you can’t make it go away. It’s called love.

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.

Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.

His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?" But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.

"I liked the feeling of love," [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. "I wish we still had that," he whispered. "Of course," he added quickly, "I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live." [...] "Still," he said slowly, almost to himself, "I did like the light they made. And the warmth."

So many of my books, I don't want to say they have messages, but they have important things to say.

We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that's why kids want precision in what they read - they don't like that moral ambiguity.