I didnt write anything at all except book reports until I was in seventh grade, and then I wrote mostly poetry for myself.

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 got to thinking—when it was too late—you have to reach out to people. To your family, too. You can't just let them sit there, you should put your hand out. If they slap it back, well you reach out again if you care enough. If you don't care enough, you forget about them, if you can.

If I'm writing by intuition, generally that calculation works itself out. But if I'm writing a mystery, and somebody has to have a reason for doing what he's doing, and it's not anything I can imagine myself wanting to do, things get a little more difficult to write, and careless mistakes are made.

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

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.

You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?