By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.

All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.

Kids are really tougher than adults, but we tend to forget this in an affluent society that lets kids indulge themselves.

Hiding under the bed doesn't make the worry stop.

She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.

I have the feeling that I know who I am, only I'm not anymore.

She couldn’t get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn’t get away.