When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

The casualities seemed to go on and on. Just when I thought I was done losing her, I would find yet another way to love her all over again.

Liz, I like you very much," he says. "Oh," she says, "I like you very much, too!" Owen is not sure if she means "O" for Owen, or just plan "Oh." He is not sure what difference it would make in either case. He feels the needs to clarify. "When I said 'I like you very much,' I actually meant 'I love you.'" "O," she says, "I actually meant the same thing." She closes the car door behind her. "Well," he says to himself, driving back to his apartment, "isn't that something?

It was a nice day, and I don't mean that it was sunny either. It was humid and not too cool, like winter was getting annoyed with itself and wanted it to be spring just as much as everyone else.

You forget all of it anyway. . . You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. . . You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They’re the last to go. And then once you’ve forgotten enough, you love someone else.

Covers matter. In my experience, a different cover can make you think you're reading an entirely different book.

I wish that the adults who are 'in power' cared more about what their children read. Books are incredibly powerful when we are young - the books I read as a child have stayed with me my entire life - and yet, the people who write about books, for the most part, completely ignore children's literature.