52 Quotes by K. A. Applegate

I live in a high-rise apartment building, so I just have two cats. They're both pound kitties. One of them, Dick, is an evil, foot-biting cat. When I write a tiger morph, I'm always imagining Dick.

I think I was 9, and my mom ordered them for me from a catalogue. They bred like crazy, and I was selling gerbils all around Michigan. They wrote a story about me in the local newspaper.

I think most writers will say that at the start of each book they think, 'I'm not sure I can do this.' But eventually, you reach a magical point where the story suddenly becomes real to you, and you become totally invested in it.

We know about the socially complex lives of elephants: how they communicate, how they bond, how they even seem to grieve. We have ethologists in the field and activists on the ground to thank for that knowledge.

I think younger readers connect so readily to animal characters because they share a certain vulnerability, particularly when it comes to adult humans, who can be a rather unpredictable lot.

I was writing at a really young age, but it took me a long time to be brave enough to become a published writer, or to try to become a published writer. It's a very public way to fail. And I was kind of scared, so I started out as a ghost writer, and I wrote for other series, like Disney 'Aladdin' and 'Sweet Valley' and books like that.

That penetrating gaze, that intelligence; it's hard not to be anthropomorphic when you're looking at a great ape - at any primate - but especially with gorillas. They're just so magnificent.