It felt like a small forever.

As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.

I was not scared of anything, when I read my book.

I came to the conclusion that in comedy, everybody gets what they need, whereas in horror, everybody gets what they deserve. I decided that at the end of the day, I was going to give everybody what they needed.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

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.

She was also an adult, and when adults fight children, adults always win.