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" I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write. "

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" I do like to wrap things up and leave some things to the readers' imagination. "

" I like to have a simple workplace. "

" Turkey, Australia, and Japan are three of my top destinations. "

" I have to be careful. My readers are very detail-oriented, and if I make a mistake they'll call me on it. "

" When I was in college, my parents' house burned down, and took a lot of the possessions I'd grown up with. That's probably one thing that made me realize material stuff is not really that important. "

" I don't think about being famous, really. Being an author, I don't generally get stopped as I walk down the street. It's not like being a movie star. "

" To a degree, the Greek and Roman mythological heroes are just the first superheroes. They appeal to children for much the same reason. These gods and heroes may have powers, but they get angry and they do the wrong thing. They are human too. "

" It's hard enough to be a middle-school kid, because you're dealing with so many facets of your identity - you're changing socially, you're changing physically, you're changing emotionally, everything is in flux, and to put race on top of that as well and have to figure out your racial identity is extremely hard. "

" I love teaching. I love working with kids... maybe some day I'll go back to the classroom. I'm not ready to say it'll never happen. "

" I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the level of success I've had. I was just writing stories for my own sons. "

" If the parents are too busy to read, it's a safe bet the children will feel the same way. Set aside time for family reading each night. It doesn't matter so much what the kids read, as long as you provide them space for reading and a sense that it is a valuable part of your daily routine. "

" The Met is such a powerful place for me because it's a natural connection between the ancient world and the modern world. And when you're dealing with ancient mythology, trying to put a modern spin on it, you really can't do much better than to call on the Met. "

" I don't teach anymore, but I can still clearly see fifth period after lunch - that's a real tough time to teach. And I tried to imagine writing a story that would appeal to those kids - even when they're tired, even when they're bouncing off the walls. "

" I get letters from college kids who have read Percy Jackson when they were younger who tell me, 'I just passed my Classics exam.' The books are accurate enough that they can serve as a gateway to Homer and Virgil. "

" I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults. "

" For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book. "

" I sometimes look at my bookshelves today and wonder which volumes my sons will treasure in twenty or thirty years. Which should I be saving for them? Which will fade with time? "

" I'm a teacher still, but with a much larger classroom. "

" The older I get, the less I obsess about material stuff. In fact, stuff has become the enemy. There always seems to be more of it than I have storage in my house! "

" It is true that I once refused to eat haggis in Scotland and this did not sit well with the local population. "

" You know, how much order is good? And when does order become too restrictive? Is a little bit of chaos okay, or is chaos always an evil force? I mean, these are questions that any kid who's ever been in a school cafeteria can relate to. "

" I can't promise that every child with learning differences will become a novelist, but I do think all children can become lifelong readers. "

" I saw 'The 39 Clues' as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way - to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive. "

" We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents. "

" I think that kids have a greater capacity for processing things than we give them credit for. "

" Writing 'Book 1: The Maze of Bones' didn't feel much different than writing one of my other novels, but I thought it was very innovative to offer the website and trading card components as well for those readers who wanted to go more in depth with the Cahill experience. "

" The images from the book you make in your head are always going to be the best images. "

" I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students. "

" I tend to think of a myth and then explore how it would play out if it were happening in the modern-day world. I modify all the myths I use, but I stick very closely to their structure - it is the hidden teacher in me. "

" The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web. "