I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.

Fiction is always really a labor.

There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.

If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

I love a large cast of characters. That's the way life is: it's flooded with people and we keep them all straight.

Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.