You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.

Kids tell me all the time, "I don't know how you do it, but that's us in the book." That's the kind of response you want, and I can't sacrifice it for the sake of somebody worried about censorship. You have to find a way to be truthful and honest.

I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations.

Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.

When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.

I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.

I simply write with an intelligent reader in mind. I don't think about how old they are.