NED VIZZINI

'Game of Thrones' cares about children. Children are heirs. There's no hemming and hawing about how they're desensitized to violence or they cost too much to send to college. They're a blessing - in many ways the only blessing - and even the evil ones have parents who love them.

Putting lessons in young adult books is very dangerous.

I have an issue with dogs - I can't pick up after them. It's nothing personal; it just makes me feel like a servant.

People have always asked me why I'm drawn to material about kids, and for me, it's - I remember being at that age and feeling completely and utterly powerless. You know, there's so many things you wanna do and so many things you're told you can't do.

Once you have a kid, it's amazing how quickly people ask, 'So are you going to stop at just one?'

A novel wouldn't be a book if there weren't some flights of fancy on the part of the author, stopping time to examine things, or to tell a joke.

I always start a book thinking that it can be something other than first-person present, and I always come back to first-person present. It's just the easiest way.

A lot of the books that I grew up reading were pretty brutal, like the 'Redwall' books.

You have tremendous freedom in the young adult book world to write what you want. You can put R-rated content in a book that you can't in a similarly targeted movie.

Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.

I've started to think it must just be chemistry, in which case we're looking for the Shift and we haven't found it yet.

I work. And I think about work, and I freak out about work, and I think about how much I think about work, and I freak out about how much I think about how much I think about work, and I think about how freaked out I get about how much I think about how much I think about work.

The Shift is coming. The Shift has to be coming. Because if you keep living like this you'll die.

But some people have to get lucky just to live. And I never knew I could make anybody lucky.

I like you a lot. Because you’re funny and smart and because you seem to like me. I know that’s not a good reason, but I can’t help it; if a girl likes me I tend to like her back [...] I like you for all this stuff but I also kind of like you for the cuts on your face—

One thing I've learnt recently: how to think nothing. Here's the trick: don't have any interest in the world around you, don't have any hope for the future, and be warm.

I don't know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time.

I'm jealous of her. Can you be jealous of your mom for being able to handle things? I couldn't take a day off, take a dog to the vet, and cook dinner. That's like three times too much stuff for me to get done in one day. How am I ever going to have my own house?

Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.

I know a lot of famous people didn't do well at school, like James Brown; he dropped out in fifth grade to be an entertainer, I respect that... but that's not going to be me. I'm not going to be able to do anything but work as hard as possible all the time and compete with everyone I know all the time to make it.

I'm still a nobody, when am I not going to be a nobody?

deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.

Depression starts slow.

I should be a success and I'm not and other people- younger people- are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting their lives in order. I'm still a nobody. When am I going to not be a nobody?

I just want to not be me.