Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.

Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.

Everything we knew condemned us, and our questioning condemned us most of all. Knowledge was the way of our people, and knowledge was dangerous. It was the first thing that freed you and the thing that put you in peril. It was the key to the ten gates. I saw them clearly now, each and every one, the gates that were there for me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.