The cure for unhappiness...It's this: What a person needs is always more than they say.

I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

I was born in New York City, along with a twin sister. I am five minutes older than Emily. It was Emily, for reasons no one knows - she certainly doesn't - who called me Avi. It stuck. It's the only name I use now.

The truth is I don't watch TV at all. It bores me.

I don't like the idea of a book being a test or being used for a test. The way - in my opinion - to make good readers is to let kids choose their own books and not test them.

I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many.