I'm a great believer in research. I have to know about a place before I write a story that is set in that place.

If you're a kid who is always on the outside hoping to be on the inside, you're watching a lot. You're trying to figure out how to become a normal person in a society that considers you weird.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

I know a movie and a book are two different things and you are going do different media in different ways. No author can want a movie to be exactly like the book because then it will be a bad movie.