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There is a saying: 'The child is parent to the adult', which means whatever happens to you as a child or teenager affects the adult you become. You are forged in your history. And fiction is an incredibly important force in shaping children, and that's why fiction needs to be diverse.

When I write for kids, I have to make sure they know what can't happen. They have to know it's a fantasy. But when I write for adults, they have to think it's real. Every detail has to be real or they won't buy it.

I don't think I wrote stories down when I was young, but I certainly made them up, perhaps sometimes losing track of the border between reality and make-believe.

Of course Stephen King doesn't believe in teen novels. I've started to suspect he doesn't even believe in teenagers.

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring.

A lot of kids are broken, and it's hard for them to believe in anything. But you have to have an imaginative mind and tell yourself, 'Hey, I can do whatever I want to.'

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

As a writer, I'm convinced that encouraging children to write fiction, to hook into that marvelous machine called the imagination, has to be good for everyone.

Teen fiction should be about teenagers - no matter how many arguments there are about what YA lit should be, this seems like the one thing we can all agree on.