…there are people who believe that stories for children should not have darkness in them. There are people who believe that children know nothing of darkness. I offer up my own four-year-old heart, full of treachery and deceit and love and longing, as proof to the contrary.
      Children's hearts, like our hearts, are complicated. And children need, just as we do, stories that reflect the truth of their own experience of being human. That truth is this: we all do battle with the darkness that is inside of us and outside of us. Stories that embody this truth offer great comfort because they tell us we do not do battle alone...
      This is the other great, good gift of stories that acknowledge the existence of darkness. Yes, the stories say, darkness lies within you, and darkness lies without; but look, you have choices. You can take action. But none of these things, none of these shining moments, can happen without first acknowledging the battle that rages in the world and within our own hearts. We cannot act against the darkness until we admit it exists...
      And this, finally, is the miracle of stories: together, we readers form a community of unlikely heroes. We are all stumbling through the dark. But when we read, we journey through the dark together. And because we travel together, there is the promise of light.

     ..."Sammy," he said to Sam Adams, "my coming interrupted something you were saying…'we will fight'. You had got that far."
     "Why, yes. That's no secret."
     "For what will we fight?"
     "To free Boston from these infernal redcoats and…"
     "No," said Otis. "Boy, give me more punch. That's not enough reason for going into a war. Did any occupied city ever have better treatment than we've had from the British? Has one rebellious newspaper been stopped—one treasonable speech? Where are the firing squads, the jails jammed with political prisoners? What about the gallows for you, Sam Adams, and you, John Hancock? It has never been set up. I hate those infernal British troops spread all over my town as much as you do. Can't move these days without stepping over a soldier. But we are not going off into civil war merely to get them out of Boston. Why are we going to fight? Why, why?"
     There was an embarrassed silence. Sam Adams was the acknowledged ringleader. It was for him to speak now. "We will fight for the rights of Americans. England cannot take our money away by taxes."
     "No, no. For something more important than the pocketbooks of our American citizens."
     Rab said, "For the rights of Englishmen—everywhere."
     "Why stop with Englishmen?" Otis was warming up. He had a wide mouth, crooked and generous. He settled back in his chair and then he began to talk. It was such a talk as Johnny had never heard before. The words surged up through the big body, flowed out of the broad mouth. He never raised his voice, and he went on and on…
     "…For men and women and children all over the world," he said. "...for even as we shoot down the British soldiers we are fighting for rights such as they will be enjoying a hundred years from now..."

     "It is all so much simpler than you think," he said. He lifted his hands and pushed against the rafters. "We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills…we fight, we die, for one simple thing. Only that a man can stand up."

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

...This leads me to why I write for teenagers. I'm pissed. I'm angry. I'm enraged. I wish I could be a sweet and cuddly author, but that's not possible. Inside, I'm 15 years old, and I'm mad as hell. I'm angry because I can see the world through teenage eyes and through grown-up eyes, and I know it's not fair. The lies, the injustice, and the hypocrisy we force-feed our teenagers makes me sick.
      I love teenagers because they are honest. I love teenagers because they are raw and passionate. They think in black and white and are willing to go to extremes to defend their beliefs. I love teenagers because they are artistic. They are risk-takers. They are shape-shifters, trying on new skins, new personalities, new dreams. I love teenagers because they challenge me, and because they frustrate me. They give me hope. They give me nightmares. They are our children, and they deserve the best books we can write. I wrote Speak for these wonderful, maddening, beautiful creatures. But I'm glad you liked it, too.

I don't know why we authors strive so hard to make our fiction a plausible representation of life: real life is so utterly implausible.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live.