K. A. Applegate quotes:

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  • Stan is a rescue Chihuahua mix. He was the role model for Bob, the dog in 'Ivan.' The drawings in the book look precisely like Stan.

  • I think having imaginary friends is an amazing coping mechanism. It's pretty wonderful, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

  • I hate to witness animals in captivity - or see circus elephants paraded down the streets. When animals are caged, it's a loss of what they are.

  • It occurred to me that a food drive would be a natural way to talk to kids about hunger, which so many of them simply aren't aware of.

  • I think we have a real obligation when we do have animals in captivity to understand their needs and to care for them as well as we can.

  • I've got to believe I'm the first person to win the Newbery who has written a Harlequin romance!

  • I love any excuse to come to New York - when it's not February.

  • 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 was sure I wanted to grow up to be either a veterinarian or a writer. In fact, I worked for a vet during high school, doing everything from cleaning cages to assisting in surgery.

  • When I was a child, going to a circus with wild animal acts was a rite of passage. These days, it's an act of complicit cruelty.

  • 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.

  • One of the reasons I love writing for middle graders, besides their voracious appetite for books, is their deep concern for fairness and morality.

  • I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

  • Hunger and homelessness aren't things we always want to talk about.

  • When we have financial struggles, kids are so much more aware of things than we want them to be.

  • One of my first paid gigs was writing psychology quizzes for 'YM,' a monthly teen magazine like 'Seventeen.'

  • I tend to write short, brief snippets - I lean toward the chamber music end as opposed to the symphony end of things.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • What do we lose without wild animal acts at the circus? Absolutely nothing, except the opportunity to be haunted and heartbroken.

  • I hope kids feel gratitude for what they do have.

  • I really love writing, but I am very easily distracted: my two cats fighting, a rainbow, a TV show... I have to use every trick to keep myself at the computer.

  • At the end of the day, I'd love to see children stop begging their parents to go to the circus. That's what would make me most happy.

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