Jonathan Stroud

As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don't like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

I write for kids because I think the most interesting (and most humorous) stories come from people's childhoods. When I was writing 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid,' I had a blast talking on the phone to my younger brother, Patrick, remembering all of the things that happened to our family when we were growing up.