It's – I write the books and let the market find who reads it. I guess a young adult is anywhere from ten to fifteen.

You have only one life, make the most of it

I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut.

School just speeds things up... Without school it might take 70 years before you wake up and are able to count.

Not counting Small Steps, I think Holes is my best book, in terms of plot, and setting, and the way the story revealed itself. It hasn’t changed my life, other than that I have more money than I did before I wrote it. I’m still too close to Small Steps to compare it to Holes.

When I turned the corner, I saw Toni waving at me from the elevator. I think I've already told you how it made me feel to see her smile and wave at me. You can have your sunsets and waterfalls. If a piano were to suddenly fall on my head, that's the image I'd want forever engraved in my mind. —Alton Richard

It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealinggreat-great-grandfather!