If there is a book that you really want to read and it has not been written yet, then you must write it.

In case you were wondering what I'm doing up here--and I think it's a safe bet that right now I am, so that makes at least two of us--I'm here because I wrote a book, called The Graveyard Book, that was awarded the 2009 Newbery Medal.

This means that I have impressed my daughters by having been awarded the Newbery Medal, and I impressed my son even more by defending the fact that I had won the Newbery Medal from the hilarious attacks of Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, so the Newbery Medal made me cool to my children. This is as good as it gets.

You are almost never cool to your children...

It was 5:45 in the morning. No one had died, though, I was fairly certain of that. My cell phone rang.

"Hello. This is Rose Trevino. I'm chair of the ALA Newbery committee ..." Oh, I thought, blearily. Newbery. Right. Cool. I may be an honor book or something. That would be nice. "And I have the voting members of the Newbery committee here, and we want to tell you that your book ..."

"THE GRAVEYARD BOOK," said fourteen loud voices, and I thought, I may be still asleep right now, but they probably don't do this, probably don't call people and sound so amazingly excited, for honor books ...

"... just won ..."

"THE NEWBERY MEDAL," they chorused. They sounded really happy. I checked the hotel room because it seemed very likely that I was still fast asleep. It all looked reassuringly solid.

You are on a speaker-phone with at least fifteen teachers and librarians and suchlike great, wise, and good people, I thought. Do not start swearing like you did when you got the Hugo Award. This was a wise thing to think because otherwise huge, mighty, and four-letter swears were gathering. I mean, that's what they're for. I think I said, You mean it's Monday? And I fumfed and mumbled and said something of a thank you thank you thank you okay this was worth being woken up for nature.

( And then the world went mad... )

Books aren't nutritious. Like vitamins or roughage. No one will die of not reading another story. Storybooks are not spinach! After all, what can fiction actually do? Only dye your thoughts a different color, hang your skull with tapestries, take you time-traveling to the curtain walls of the universe; question your conscience; blast the window-shutters off your soul and let in the sunshine.

Good prose is like a windowpane.

I think a good book is a good book forever. I don’t think they get less good because times change.

Books which satisfy us and feed us and nourish us have to have this substratum of genuine truth in them.