Reading was like eating alone, with that same element of bingeing.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

A lot of girls who turn into something remarkable start off as irrepressible, confident and a handful.

We never believe we're beautiful, no matter how many times we hear it. We never believe it until someone says it in the right way.

Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.

Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.