I've killed hundreds of teenagers. Hundreds. And I didn't know why. Why did I enjoy doing it so much? Why? And then I realized - I had a teenager at home!

A real New Yorker likes the sound of a garbage truck in the morning.

Well, I hate it when authors come into a school and they say to kids, 'Write from your heart, only write what you know, and write from your heart.' I hate that because it's useless. I've written over 300 books - not one was written from my heart. Not one. They were all written for an audience, they were all written to entertain a certain audience.

Most fears are basic: fear of the dark, fear of going down in the basement, fear of weird sounds, fear that somebody is waiting for you in your closet. Those kinds of things stay with you no matter what age.

Everything that has happened to me has been amazing and surprising.

I've never turned into a bee - I've never been chased by a mummy or met a ghost. But many of the ideas in my books are suggested by real life.

I always just wanted to be funny. I never really planned to be scary.