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Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

One likes to think one grows as a writer as one ages, else all you get is an 'old' young writer. Beyond that is the changing landscape of the universe and the stories I choose to tell.

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you are honest - you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

I tend to think of stories and books as being for everyone, just with an 'entry reading age' rather than an age range.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

I'm looking forward to writing more novels for young adults.