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I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

I want my audiences to be as open-minded as my characters.

Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.

I love kids, but they are a tough audience.

I think my primary audience is in some sense an adult audience, because I think that will then have a knock-on effect for children.

Children see things very well sometimes - and idealists even better.

My children have become popular, and they show a tremendous love for the public. They're professionals.

Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.

I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read 'The Giver' now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.

I've always been concerned about kids - not just my own three, but all kids - what kind of an image I'm providing for them, what kind of inspiration. I don't know now. Maybe I'm leading them down the path to self-destruction.