Kenneth Oppel

“I'm cursed with this puritanical streak that makes me want everything to be about something. It's a terrible affliction.”

“You can't eat [literature], that's the problem," he said. "I've tried, it's very dry, and not at all nutritious.”

“I took [Kate's] hand in mine, and felt her fingers squeeze back. And I thought: home. It took me completely by surprise. But I suppose that once you bid farewell to your first home, you're always looking for another—that place where you can feel happy and strong and at your best. For three years I'd called the Aurora home. But now that I lived in Paris, it was not the city itself that was home. It was Kate.”

“I felt like I was seeing Shannon through a new lens, undistracted by Jennifer's nuclear glow. I could see how pretty she really was, how kind her eyes were.”

“Realistically, the chance of any book becoming a film is slim.”

“I wrote 'Airborn' after completing three books about bats. I loved my bats, but what a treat it was to write about humans again. They could eat food other than midges and mosquitoes, they wore clothing, they slept in beds - all this struck me as wonderfully novel.”

“Let me get you all some punch,” I said.“You're leaving us?” said Isabel, sounding panicky.“I'll be right back,” I promised. “If anyone comes near you, just scream and run.”

“It's somewhat disquieting that the same parents and educators who are horrified by the notion of child soldiers have bestowed upon 'The Hunger Games' a double mantle of critical praise and global bestsellerdom.”

“The preface? Why would he waste time with the preface? Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing!”

“The seed for my novel 'Half Brother' was planted in my mind over twenty years ago, but didn't germinate until late 2007 when I came across the obituary for Washoe, an extraordinary chimpanzee who had learned over 250 words of American Sign Language.”

“Individuality: ten. Cautiousness: three. Combativeness: nine." She looked over and gave me a wink. "Well, what did you expect from a pirate's daughter? Hope: eight. Amativeness. What's that?"Kate acutally blushed. "I think it has something to do with your attractiveness to the opposite sex.""Ten," said Nadira, smiling modestly. (Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel)”

“I think good art should always be entertaining, or at least give pleasure of some sort. And my chief goal as a writer has always been to tell a good story and give my readers a good time.”

“The more I worked on 'Half Brother,' the more it seemed to me the story was really about love in all its possible forms - how and why we decide to bestow it, or withdraw it; how we decide what is more worthy of being loved, and what is less. We are masters of conditional love.”

“IMBECILE!" the chef shouted. "Next time why don't you just put your whole HAND in the food, hey? Yes, your whole hand, or maybe your FACE! I arrange the food on plates with care, are you understanding what I am telling you? It is part of the art form of cooking, yes? A lovely plate of food is a thing of beauty! And then you, NUMBSKULL, come along and put your fat greasy FINGERS all over my plate, and SHAKE the plate, and move my food all around the plate until it looks like pigs' vomit!""Chef Vlad!" I cried out in delight.”

“When I'd written my 'Silverwing' series - I'd imbued the bats with full human awareness and vocabulary.”

“None of us gets to choose how we're born, it's what we make of ourselves afterwards.”

“The world should have been in Technicolour, but seemed more like black and white.”

“The world of 'The Hunger Games' is a paranoid survivalist's dream.”

“We used to flock to watch gladiators, public torture and executions. In more recent times, our appetite for mortal violence has been sublimated in sports, photorealistic video games, film and literature.”

“Nothing's scarier than having a sick child, and one so newly born, and so vulnerable. It's the worst thing for a parent.”