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I like to write books that I would have liked as a child, that would have got me thinking and imagining beyond the words on the page. In a way, my audience is always how I remember myself as a child.

I always wanted to write for children. When I was growing up, we were really poor. My mother had left, and it was all a mess. So I lived in my head a lot, and I would get lots of books for Christmas - from librarians and teachers - and they just fed my imagination.

One of the reasons I began to write was because I wanted stories for my children where the characters spoke as they did and had similar life experiences.

My story is the story of thousands of children from around the world. I hope it inspires others to stand up for their rights.

I've always wanted to have a book published - it was a dream of mine, but the thought of actually writing a book made me feel really sick.

I was the typical little sister who wanted to be just like her older brother. When I was growing up, my brother wrote phenomenal stories, so I wanted to write them, too.

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

I have a children's book already out and my autobiography.

I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses.