Let me love you, but don't love me back. Do love me and let me hate you for a while. Let me feel like I have some control, because I know I never do.

Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated.

It wasn't just that Lucy wanted to help him. She wasn't as selfless as that. She was madly attracted to him. She was attracted to all of the normal things and the weird things, too, like the back of his neck and his thumbs on the edge of his desk and the way his hair stuck out on one side like a little wing over his ear. She caught his smell once, and it made her dizzy. She couldn't fall asleep that night.

I agree that a love of reading is a great gift for a parent to pass on to his or her child.

You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried.

As a writer, you live in such isolation. It's hard to imagine your book has a life beyond you.