I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.

I was 16 years old, attending boarding school, and I loved Pride and Prejudice. From the opening pages, I loved it. And I will say in my class, not one but two boys told me that I reminded them of Lizzy Bennet. I didn't realize it at the time but this was the nicest thing that any male would ever say to me. This was as good as it got.

I feel like as I've gotten older I've unfortunately come to the decision that a lot of people who seem normal and boring maybe are normal and boring.

I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.

High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you're there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified.