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.

I'm probably slightly more famous than I've been comfortable with. Famous enough to have my phone calls returned is about as famous as I want to be.

He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Books are defensive, not offensive (unless you're the puzzled adult trying to make the kid with the book interact).

I think...that I would rather recollect a life mis-spent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.