BRUCE COVILLE

When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech - it's really a one-man show. I call it 'didactic standup.'

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.

I know what I'm going to write for the next three years. It's frustrating, because if I get a good new idea, I have to put it aside.

Ideas are all around you - everything gives you ideas. But the real source is the part of your brain that dreams.

In terms of age, I think I've covered about as wide a range as is possible, having written everything from picture books to early chapter books to middle grade novels to YA to one adult novel - and having been editor and lead writer for a magazine for retired people!

When I was a kid, I read books that made me laugh but also made me shiver in terror. I wanted to make books that made other people feel the same way.

I grew up around the corner from my grandparents' dairy farm, which was three miles outside of a small town called Phoenix.

I loved teaching. I used to teach fourth grade.

I feel like a very lucky person. From the time I was young, I had a dream of becoming a writer. Now that dream has come true, and I am able to make my living doing something I really love.

I tend to be more of a novel writer. In fact, some of my novels started out as short stories, and I just got carried away! I think some of my best writing is in the short story form, but novels come more naturally to me.

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way to becoming a writer, including toy maker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and assembly line worker. Eventually, I became an elementary teacher and worked with second and fourth graders.

My writing works best when I remember that bookish child who adored reading and gear the work toward him.

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.

Most of all, I love being a storyteller. And yes, I want to make a good living, but I'm not always driven by the best commercial sense.

The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors.

I am ignoring you. In fact, I think you are a figment of my imagination.

Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people—they always go away, sooner or later. You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.

Protective coloration...you learn to use it to get along in the world if you want. Only I got sick of living in the box the world prescribed; it was far to small to hold me. So I knocked down a few walls.

There's lots of kinds of chains. You can't see most of them, the one's that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link. Sometimes the links are weak, snap like this one did. That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all.

Gadfangled girl things, always robbed me of my common sense.

If you don’t jump, the wings never come.

Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.

Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all... Never was a chain that couldn't be broken. Sometimes its even a good idea.

All these guys picking on smart kids and calling them geeks and dweebs are going to grow up and want to know why they don't do something about the terrible state the world is in. I can tell you why. By the time they grow up, most of the kids who realy could have changed things are wrecked.

The first draft of a story is the writer's clay.