"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."

And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.

People do things that turn out badly, often for the most benevolent of reasons.

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

I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors.

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.

That's why they call you Seer. You see more than most.