I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.

Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed.

Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves.

Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well.

And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.

There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country.

The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.