I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws.

Imagine a mosaic picture of a house in the country: lots of red and blue and yellow and black and brown and white and a dozen different shades of green tiles which make a beautiful picture if you stand back far enough. All the little red squares are true - true things, true places, true feelings. But the red squares aren't the picture. All the rest of it is lies and stories, often within the same sentence.

Dreams are hopes, and echoes of hope.

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.

For me, closing libraries is the equivalent of eating your seed corn to save a little money.

In order for stories to work - for kids and for adults - they should scare. And you should triumph. There's no point in triumphing over evil if the evil isn't scary.

The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.