I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me.

When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.

Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.

This was never any place I was meant to be. This isn’t a place for me.

His heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small restless body.

Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.

It was spring break, so the theater was always packed with high schools students. It was an animal house. I wanted to burn the place down.