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

...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ... Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.

If you were to look at each atom as a universe unto itself, think of the number of universes within each of us.

Adopted. Big Deal; so was Superman

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.

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.

Something about the joy and pain of that moment, something about the excruciating contrast, made me feel that no matter what happens now, my life has been worth it. What a ride.