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Life isn't so complicated for children. They have more time to think about the really important things. That's why I occasionally moralise in my children's books in a way I wouldn't dare when writing for adults.

I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just don't take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. 'Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read 'Little House on the Prairie' when he was in third grade.

At around nine or 10 years of age, young people start to decide for themselves what's moral or not, and that's why I like writing for that age group so much.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

The charge of being ambiguous and indefinite may be brought against every human composition, and necessarily arises from the imperfection of language. Perhaps no two men will express the same sentiment in the same manner and by the same words; neither do they connect precisely the same ideas with the same words.

One of the problems you have when you read with kids is that once they like something they want you to read it a hundred times.

Children don't make judgments about which details are important... a child captures them all.

Ambiguity is very interesting in writing; it's not very interesting in science.

Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.

Children take in more information than we'd like to believe.