I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.

A lot of times, when people send me books to read - new writers mostly - I find that the book is still in a draft stage and that before it can leave the writer's hands and head to a publisher, it needs about five more revisions. Some people don't want to do that.

You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.

What you say is what matters.

I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.