Quotes from Ransom Riggs

I had always secretly wanted to write a novel.

It was painful, but I really wanted to get 'Hollow City' right, and I'm glad I put in the time because I'm really proud of it.

I fell in love with London and one particular era in London.

I loved the idea of a book of fairytales meant especially for peculiar children, and I love even more the idea of making that fictional book real.

When you collect photographs, you're sort of at the mercy of the gods.

It never occurred to me that there were so many wonderful photos that had been orphaned and were out there in the world, waiting to be found. Over time, I found a lot of very strange pictures of kids, and I wanted to know who they were, what their stories were. Since the photos had no context, I decided I needed to make it up.

We kind of know there's no more frontiers in the physical world. So the frontiers move from where we haven't been yet to where we've been and abandoned.

You find a lot of junk when you're searching through lost and tossed photo ephemera, but every so often you'll find a gem, a wallet-sized masterpiece you're certain could hang on the wall of a gallery if only someone with a name had taken it. Find one or two of those and you're hooked for life.

I'm getting a lot of mail from readers, and I'd say 90% seem to be from adults, which amazes me. But then again, I can only write what I imagine I'd like to read, and I'm an adult, so maybe it's not so surprising after all.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

I try to imagine the scenes as I'm writing them as if I were watching them play like a film.

Creepy is better than just plain scary because you can't look away from creepy - you want to know the truth!

I grew up in Florida, which is the land of flea markets and swap meets. My grandmother loved to go these places, and she'd take me along.

Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.

I had some great English teachers. One of my favorite - her name was Linda Janoff - was wonderful and so irreverent and so smart and encouraging.

Teenagers are extremely smart, and if they think for even a second that an author is 'writing down' to them, or mimicking their voice poorly, or condescending to them in any way, they will throw the book across the room.

I was in the same class of 100 kids from grade 6 through 12, many of whom I still call friends.

What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You are here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die.

I didn't know who I was writing for initially. I assumed 'Miss Peregrine' was for adults, because I was an adult - but I didn't know much about publishing back then.

I've always been interested in exploration and the history of exploring the world, but it seems like we've found everything now.

Our debt was too great and the words thank you too small.

Some days, I would find what seemed like entire family trees, torn from once-treasured albums and dumped in disorganized bins, selling 10 for a dollar. I wondered how people could give up pictures of their great-grandparents for complete strangers to paw through - or why complete strangers would want them.

My creativity thrives with limitations.

Woodcuts have a really timeless sort of feel, and they feel like a book that's a couple hundred years old.