Nothing exists without its opposite.

I think when you’re dying you start looking for important things in the corners. You can’t let anything that seems even semi-important pass, because it passes forever. Things take on meaning.

Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.

Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose.

I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it maybe travels two blocks. A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. If they think it, they say it...Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.

There's only one thing to say to the censors: Shut up.

Certainly working with teens keeps me up to date with language and with certain kinds of thinking. I often feel like I have to go back to that 17-year-old Chris Crutcher, and that forms the core voice. I can draw on teens from 1964 to 2001 to find a part of the voice I need.