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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.

I tell my students that with a 200-page novel, you are going to write 100 pages that don't make the final cut. See it as an opportunity, although it took me a while to enjoy that 'lost in the woods' feeling.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.

I think what makes good children's books is putting the same care and effort into it as if I was writing for adults. I don't write anything - put anything in my books - that I'd be embarrassed to put in an adult book.

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

For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book.

I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.

So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book.

I don't read books regularly, because I'm always writing them. I've written 30 books, thousands of pages.

It's a fantastic privilege to spend three or four hundred pages with a reader. You have time to go into certain questions that are painful or difficult or complicated. That's one thing that appeals to me very much about the novel form.