A sport has its own built-in integrity, doesn't need an artificial one. Athletics carries its own set of truths, and those truths are diminished and manipulated by people with agendas.

I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left,I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day.

I think the value in books like mine, and a great number by other talented writers, is in the ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark, where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike.

My first book, 'Running Loose', was censored back in 1983 or '84. Every book I've written since has been censored somewhere.

Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose.

And I think if you're going to be with somebody, you owe it to them to show yourself.

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.