That's the funny thing about time. It is only in looking back that it's easy to connect the dots. To see exactly why everything needed to happen the way that it did.

American fantasy is not a genre we think about too often. Sure, we are familiar with the worlds of English boarding school houses and castles and fairies, but true American fantasy, fantasy that is built on the land of this country, is hard to come by.

Everyone has a story to tell, and in a perfect world, everyone would get the opportunity to tell it. Some of us have the stories, some of us have the words, and some of us have both. Let's honor the portions we bring to the table and give credit where credit is due.

Writing isn't manual labor. Nor is it emptying the dishwasher or paying bills. It's work, sure, but sometimes it should be fun.

In her book 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,' Sheryl Sandberg talks about the mentor/mentee relationship - and how it needs to be organic. She goes on to explain how important it is for men and women to step into mentoring roles. I would argue that not only is it important - but it's important far earlier than we think.

One of the things that defines YA is a really strong narrative. Adults love YA because, at the end of the day, they're good stories and page-turners. The other element is emotion. The teen years are a very emotional and intense time, and I think it's a time we that we can all relate to and remember.

An art book is a museum without walls.

I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.

We named the book 'Extreme Ownership' because we really found that when we looked at not only at leaders but at teams that were the most successful, we found that the ones that had this attitude of extreme ownership were the ones that did the best, and it's definitely an attitude that I had.

My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read 'Boneland.'

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.