76 Quotes by Rodman Philbrick

My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life.

I was never forced to write. At least, I was never forced or even encouraged to write fiction. Creative writing wasn't in the curriculum at my school when I was in sixth grade.

Unfortunately, the author of a book pretty much gives up control of the story when the producers take over a book to make it into a movie.

What surprised me most about the Donner tragedy was that, given the terrible circumstances, how anyone survived at all.

I started writing stories in sixth grade. But writing wasn't cool, like being good at sports, or being part of the in crowd, or winning fights on the playground.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

I vividly remember my sixth-grade classroom. I remember what it smelled like, where I sat, what I could see out the window, and how I felt about things. Peel away my decrepit middle-aged exterior, and an important part of me is still twelve years old. It helps me when I sit down to write stories for kids.

Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors.

After I had written more than a dozen adult genre novels, an editor I knew in New York asked me to write a mystery for young adults.