If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.

When you're writing, at least when I'm writing, I don't think about themes and I try not to sermonize with any particular message.

So one day my mother sat me down and explained that I couldn’t become an explorer because everything in the world had already been discovered. I’d been born in the wrong century, and I felt cheated.

When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking.

What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You are here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

There was a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, a brother and sister who could lift boulders over their heads.