“I hope, that in the days, and weeks, and years to come, the question of where the dividing lines between adult and children’s fiction really are, and why they blur so, and whether we truly need them—and who, ultimately, books are for—will rise up in your mind when you least expect it to, and vex you, as you also are unable, in an entirely satisfactory manner, to answer it.”

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

“Back in my day, we had it all set up. You lined up when you died, and you'd answer for your evil deeds and your good deeds, and if your evil deeds outweighed a feather, we'd feed your soul and your heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls""He must have eaten a lot of people.""Not as many as you'd think. It was a really heavy feather. We had it made special. You had better be pretty damn evil to tip the scales on that baby...”

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”

“Fat Charlie blew his nose. "I never knew I had a brother," he said."I did," said Spider. "I always meant to look you up, but I got distracted. You know how it is.""Not really.""Things came up.""What kind of things?""Things. They came up. That's what things do. They come up. I can't be expected to keep track of them all.""Well, give me a f'rinstance."Spider drank more wine. "Okay. The last time I decided that you and I should meet, I, well, I spent days planning it. Wanted it to go perfectly. I had to choose my wardrobe. Then I had to decide what I'd say to you when we met. I knew that the meeting of two brothers, well, it's the subject of epics, isn't it? I decided that the only way to treat it with the appropriate gravity would be to do it in verse. But what kind of verse? Am I going to rap it? Declaim it? I mean, I'm not going to greet you with a limerick. So. It had to be something dark, something powerful, rhythmic, epic. And then I had it. The perfect line: Blood calls to blood like sirens in the night. It says so much. I knew I'd be able to get everything in there - people dying in alleys, sweat and nightmares, the power of free spirits uncrushable. Everything was going to be there. And then I had to come up with a second line, and the whole thing completely fell apart. The best I could come up with was Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty got a fright."Fat Charlie blinked. "Who exactly is Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty?""It's not anybody. It's just there to show you where the words ought to be. But I never really got any futher on it than that, and I couldn't turn up with just a first line, some tumpties and three words of an epic poem, could I? That would have been disrespecting you.""Well....""Exactly. So I went to Hawaii for the week instead. Like I said, something came up.”

“The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?"And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!”

“Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them.”