When anything bad happens to me or someone I know, I always know who to blame. My no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.

I'm not stupid. I know everybody thinks I am. I just don't like answering their questions.

Whenever you give someone a present or sing a holiday song, you're helping Santa Claus. To me, that's what Christmas is all about. Helping Santa Claus!

You have only one life, make the most of it

I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book.

You make the decision: Whom did God punish?

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.