Books for children require absolute sincerity and purity. To create something real, you must strip away all that is superfluous, all that is artificial, all that is so common in adult prose. What remains must be only goodness, beauty, joy, light, and love—only the most valuable and important things, only the things you would want to give your children. But this is how books for adults should be written, too… And perhaps, this is just how we should live as well…
As a writer, I’ve realized
That if I’m reaching out through my books,
It should be to children.
Only with them does it make sense to speak sincerely
And of true things,
For they themselves are always sincere
And true.
And when I do write for adults,
I’m speaking only to the childlike spark still within them,
The one that’s stayed with them all along,
The only sincere and true part in them. In us. All of us.
However much we try to hide it from each other.
