I don't know how to write a children's book.

I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it.

I had been reading a fabulous book [The Man Verdi, by Frank Walker] about [Giuseppe] Verdi, whom I adore.

A whole new world of Italian music was springing up, and [Giuseppe] Verdi was seen as old. Boito got Verdi all excited about the possibility of doing another opera, another kind of opera. In fact, Verdi composed his two best operas, Otello and Falstaff, in his eighties.

I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.

One of the few graces of getting old - and God knows there are few graces - is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me.

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it