“To ugly ducklings everywhere,Don't worry about those fluffy yellow morons:They'll never get to be swans”

“I don't want you because I expect you to swoop in and rescue me and make everything all right.I don't want you because you're beautiful. None of that matters. you could never be a bad bargain to me, because...you're you.And I love you.”

“Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.'My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being different is cool' I will die a happy writer.-Guest blog - what diversity means to me”

“Trusting anyone can get you killed.”

“I never knew my mother's name.”

“I’ve learned a lot about love over these last months. And part of what I’ve learned is that you have to want someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. You have to love a real person, not some dream in your head.”

“Our greatest warriors,' Terayama-san said, 'believe that they are already dead. They live as if their lives are over, and so fighting holds no terror for them.'A Suda-san looked gravely at him. 'That, Terayama-san, is one of the saddest things I have ever heard.”