I've had people say very dismissive things about my books, but I also feel like I probably have more readers because I'm a woman. I mean, more readers are women and more people who buy books are women, so I don't feel like it's a total disadvantage to be a female writer.

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.

Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion.

I actually liked the disolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy. If I were to ever kill myself, I thought it would be in the summer.

Of course, I didn't imagine then that I could have had a real relationship with any guy. I thought that by virtue of being me I was disqualified.

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

Even more than getting compliments on social media, what I love is when some random stranger says something very funny or insightful about my books, often in 140 characters or less! It's a very casual, low-stakes, non-burdensome way of connecting that I think is fun for both the writer and the reader. And there are a lot of clever people out there who have no connection to publishing.