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" 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. "

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

Lois Lowry

Science

Fantasy

Literature

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Kids have no sense of appropriateness. They can ask me whatever they want. You do develop a sense of intimacy with readers, and they tell you things about themselves. During a school year, I'll get e-mails asking about the books. I'll give them information, but I won't do their homework for them. "

" 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. "

" My mind is always on whatever next project I'm working on. "

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

" People do things that turn out badly, often for the most benevolent of reasons. "

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

" People can lie in letters, but they tend not to. They certainly lie in memoirs. "

" If somebody takes the time, a: to read a book that I have written, and then to b: care about it enough to write me and ask questions, surely I owe them a response. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Most people remember being 4 objectively, as if they're seeing a movie of a 4-year-old. But me, if you ask me to think about when I'm 4, I can feel myself being 4, and I am there, looking out through my 4-year-old eyes. "

Lois Lowry

Eyes

People

" People are starting to refer to 'The Giver' as a classic, but I don't know how that is defined. But if it means that 10, 20, 50 years from now kids will still be reading it, that is kind of awe-inspiring. "

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

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

" The grand surprise has really been the fact that being an author, which to me had always implied being a private person, actually requires you to be a public person as well, and those are two separate entities to me. "

Lois Lowry

Surprise

Two

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

" 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. "

Lois Lowry

Place

Lose

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along. "