Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.

If we're going to ask our kids at age 18 to go off to war and die for their country, I don't see any problem with asking them at age 16 to think about what that might mean.

Then it was this big thing. She was like, 'I never want to see you again', and I was like, 'Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.

You made her apologize for sickness. For her courage. You made her feel sorry for dying.

One of the series I like is D.M. Cornish's 'Monster Blood Tattoo,' in which he creates a whole language. Kids who are reading that are building a language in their heads. There's no real cognitive difference. I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.

There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams.

A lot of the drive to make narratives came from having to play by myself as a 5- or 6-year-old in the woods.