Matthew Tobin Anderson

“I write for teens partially to work out whatever it was that I needed to from my own teenage years.”

“I completely love music. I used to be the music critic at 'The Improper Bostonian.' It's just something I've always loved very deeply.”

“Sometimes reading other writers helps. You learn some little technique that turns out to be useful, or simply are reinspired by the amazing things others do.”

“Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.'”

“I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.”

“If we're going to ask our kids at age 18 to go off to war and die for their country, I don't see any problem with asking them at age 16 to think about what that might mean.”

“I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.”

“We love fantasy novels in which the characters think that they're peasants but turn out to be princes and kings.”

“A lot of the drive to make narratives came from having to play by myself as a 5- or 6-year-old in the woods.”

“All of my books, which are supposedly, I mean they're called YA novels, my hope is that adults would find no reason not to read them if they read them.”

“One of the series I like is D.M. Cornish's 'Monster Blood Tattoo,' in which he creates a whole language. Kids who are reading that are building a language in their heads. There's no real cognitive difference. I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.”

“Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?”

“Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.”

“I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.”

“Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'”

“The bedroom in my apartment is far too small to hold a nightstand. There is, however, this bookshelf. Yes, I stow whatever I'm reading on the lower shelf, but more importantly, it's where I keep a collection of ghost books.”

“I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.”

“I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.”

“Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.”

“Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger. Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?”