I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.

I write for teens partially to work out whatever it was that I needed to from my own teenage years.

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.

Empedolces claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be broken

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

Keep thinking. You can hear our brains rattling around inside us, like the littler Russian dolls.

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.