A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

I've felt that if I just used initials nobody would know whether I was a man or a woman, a dog or a tiger. I could hide from view, like a bat on the underside of a branch.

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for, if you are honest, you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.

It may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us-the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star-we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child.

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate.

For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.

You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself.