Patrick Carman

“I watched the night sky with it's countless stars and its moon, and I wondered about the universe and all that had been created, why the stars and the moon rose at night and the sun in the day, how vast it must be, how I could never understand the infinite measure of its size.”

“I travel to a lot of schools, and I see firsthand that while we do still have a lot of traditional readers, we don't have as many as we used to. And we're missing an awful lot of kids entirely... Do I want to get rid of the Internet? Obviously, I don't want that because of all the amazing things it brings.”

“Don't get me wrong - I love books! I just think a video has a bigger bang when it comes to a good, old-fashioned adrenaline rush.”

“As exciting, difficult, and memorable as our past can be, there comes a time when we have to get on with living.”

“That thing, that tiny part of The Land of Elyon, is gone but not entirely forgotten. Elyon had his reason for sending you and me on this journey. Sometimes we see something as plain as a dying leaf and our hearts grow sad, but we must always hold true and fight on, Alexa. Whatever happens to us, we will not be forgotten in the end. He will remember us.”

“Yes, we're pretty into books around my house. We have lots and lots of books around. We have TV, but really no one ever watches it.”

“I'm a visual thinker, thrill seeker, and I'm easily distracted. I see everything I'm writing, and I think it naturally affects the pace of things.”

“It's never too late to stop believing a lie," said Thomas. "You need only courage and friends, and you have both.”

“'Skeleton Creek' is like nothing you've ever read before because it's a book and a movie at the same time.”

“I wasn't really conscious about 'The 39 Clues' movie when I wrote 'The Black Circle.'”

“Getting to the point where I was ready to write a book has been about a 20-year journey of being, really honestly, too afraid to try - which I think is pretty common for people who are trying to write a large piece of fiction.”

“Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad to get what you need.”

“They wouldn't let me into Germany from 1998-2000 because I bumped into the chancellor's daughter on my skateboard.”

“You can't be gone. I need you here, with me. What am I going to do without you?”

“Like most people, there are things I love about Amazon. It's cheap, it's fast, and it's at my doorstep. But Amazon will never replace the important role my local indie plays in my community.”

“There's something really fun about being scared, and I guess that was at least part of why I wanted to film certain scenes from my new book, 'Skeleton Creek.'”

“In the morning light, I remembered how much I loved the sound of wind through the trees. I laid back and closed my eyes, and I was comforted by the sound of a million tiny leaves dancing on a summer morning.”

“She had long been a cold and calculating person, and yet she had never given in to the darkness entirely. She would remember her mother's touch or the voice of a lost friend, and the tiniest bit of hope would return.”

“I took English courses in college, but I don't have an English degree. I have a degree in economics.”

“When I was a kid, I used to love it when one of my friends would jump out from behind a door and try to scare me. I always did the same thing in response.”