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" People in the know say 'The Giver' was the first young adult dystopian novel. "

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" I was a sidelines child: never class president, never team captain, never the one with the most valentines in my box. "

" Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book. "

" I don't set out to transmit a message. I don't write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, 'Oh, yes, it is there.' But it's not in my mind when I write. "

" When I wrote 'The Giver,' it contained no so-called 'bad words.' It was set, after all, in a mythical, futuristic, and Utopian society. Not only was there no poverty, divorce, racism, sexism, pollution, or violence in the world of 'The Giver'; there was also careful attention paid to language: to its fluency, precision, and power. "

" 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. "

" I always set out to tell a good story, to create a character that young people can relate to, place them in a situation that will be interesting, intriguing, eventually suspenseful. But what I find is that after I do that, then there are themes that emerge, which teachers can then use to provoke discussion and debate. "

" 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. "

" Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they're still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think that's true of adults as much. "

" 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. "

" There are those, I think, who are attracted to the glitz of celebrity life. I am not one of them. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult. "

" Oddly, the military world is one of great sameness. There is an orderly quality to life on an army base, and even the children of the military are brought up with that sense of order and sameness. "

" 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. "

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

" One hopes that with a book or movie, the reader or the audience will emerge from it thinking. That's the most you can hope for: that you've raised questions that will be there for the audience to think about later. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 think 'The Giver' is such a moral book, so filled with important truths, that I couldn't believe anyone would want to suppress it, to keep it from kids. "

" 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. "