“The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.”

“Children's fiction is the most important fiction of all.”

“It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us," said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.”

“Are you scared?’ asked Mr. Ibis.‘Not really.’‘Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand.”

“I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?”

“It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is.”

“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.”