If you are a conscious human being who has opinions about the world, then you will unconsciously put your own perspective into the book.

I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.

We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.

I was here for a reason. There was something I was meant not simply to be, but to do- and it wasn't to run or hide or give up the minute things seemed terrifying and impossible.

Sometimes it's better not to look back.

I grew up feeling like a weirdo like many kids do. But I was lucky to find my own home for peculiar children. I went to a school for the gifted in Florida, and it was full of kids who - we were all strange together. And that was a real blessing.

Fifty-percent of the director's job honestly is casting the movie well.