Adolescents in a house demand that parents finally grow up themselves and be authentic, or else the young persons feel hampered in getting on with their own developmental process.

I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all mankind’s diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astonishing are his books…If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would men.

If you read what teenagers write, it’s much, much darker than anything a YA [young adult] author would publish. They write hopelessness, despair, suicide, murder. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. That’s the age you’re reckoning with stuff. And I think that if you’re a YA writer who isn’t engaging with that on some level then you’re leaving them to fend for themselves…The wonderful thing about teen fiction is that fearlessness of narrative. The story has to work. I mistrust writers who claim that plot isn’t important. They tend to be writers who can’t plot. And plot is no more or less important than any of the other components of a novel. Just because plot is what people want, that doesn’t make it cheap.