We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.

You can't get rid of evil. We can't, and I feel that so intensely.

You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.

I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.

Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.