Matthew Tobin Anderson
Matthew Tobin Anderson
Matthew Tobin Anderson, known as M.T. Andersonis an American writer of children's books that range from picture books to young-adult novels. He won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2006 for The Pox Party, the first of two "Octavian Nothing" books, which are historical novels set in Revolution-era Boston. Anderson is known for using wit and sarcasm in his stories, as well as advocating that young adults are capable of mature comprehension...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 November 1968
CountryUnited States of America
My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits.
I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.
Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.
A library is an adjustable wrench for opening the head.
One of the series I like is D.M. Cornish's 'Monster Blood Tattoo,' in which he creates a whole language. Kids who are reading that are building a language in their heads. There's no real cognitive difference. I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.
Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.
I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.
I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.
A lot of the drive to make narratives came from having to play by myself as a 5- or 6-year-old in the woods.
We are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.
it's like a squid in love with the sky.
We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.
And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.
We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.