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.

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.

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

The sky was as blue as a stupid postcard, and the islands were as green as islands.

I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

Its a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.