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" I think teens are drawn to these speculative books that portray what might happen and what could happen. "

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" If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it. "

" I often compare myself as a kid to my own grandchildren, who are around 11 and 14 now. That's the age kids usually read my book. And I remember myself; we'd gone through a world war. My father was an army officer so I was aware of what was going on. But I wasn't bombarded with images of catastrophe like many kids are today. "

" Nowadays it seems as though people sit down to write what they know is going to be a trilogy. "

" You rehear your life by reading about what happens to other people. "

" So many of my books, I don't want to say they have messages, but they have important things to say. "

" I believe without a single shadow of a doubt that it is necessary for young people to learn to make choices. Learning to make right choices is the only way they will survive in an increasingly frightening world. "

" It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years. "

" When you lose a child in an accident as I did, it's final - you're not caught in this longing for him, to search for him, knowing he's out there some place. "

" There will always be a place for bunnies to talk in rhyme, but that's not what I do. "

" I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read 'The Giver' now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience. "

" I'm a writer; I like to retain subtlety and nuance. "

" I've always been interested in medicine and was pleased when my brother became a doctor. But after thinking seriously about that field, I realized that what intrigued me was not the science, not the chemistry or biology of medicine, but the narrative - the story of each patient, each illness. "

" Pretending that there are no choices to be made - reading only books, for example, which are cheery and safe and nice - is a prescription for disaster for the young. "

" Because I have two houses, I invariably get immersed in a book and then discover it's at the other house. "

" We live in times that are in many ways ambiguous. Maybe that's why kids want precision in what they read - they don't like that moral ambiguity. "

" When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay. "

" I've always been fascinated by memory and dreams because they are both completely our own. No one else has the same memories. No one has the same dreams. "

" I never, as a reader, have been particularly interested in dystopian literature or science fiction or, in fact, fantasy. "

" As female hormones decrease, they're replaced with an overwhelming urge to grow delphinium. "

" In 1952, when I was 15 and living on Governors Island, which was then First Army Headquarters, I encountered the newly-published 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Of course, that book became the iconic anti-establishment novel for my generation. "

" The fact that I lost my son permeates my being. "

" Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child. "

" This may sound strange, but at a very early age, at around 3, I was aware that I was smarter than the other kids. "

" What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming. "

" When I was a kid in the '50s, during the Eisenhower years, everything seemed to be working fine. I don't recall as a teenager ever worrying about the state of the future world. "

" When I create characters, I create a world to inhabit and they begin to feel very real for me. I don't belong in a psych ward, I don't think, but they become very real, like my own family, and then I have to say goodbye, close the door, and work on other things. "

" I don't read young adult or children's books, now that my grandchildren are beyond the age of my reading to them. I read reviews, and so I'm aware of what's out there. But I tend not to read the books. "

" Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule. "

" Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world. "

Change The World

" I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall into the 'historic fiction' category. Science fiction is not a favorite genre of mine, though I have greatly enjoyed some of the work of Ursula LeGuin. I haven't read much science fiction so I don't know other sci-fi authors. "