"See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. 'It's mine."

We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.

'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting.

The sky was electric blue above the trees but the yard felt dark. Stephanie went to the edge of the lawn and sat her forehead on her knees. The grass and soil were still warm from the day. She wanted to cry but she couldn't. The feeling was too deep.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.

I'm very interested in the way the Internet has changed teenage life. Obviously it's very different from when I grew up, when there weren't even answering machines, much less computers. I was telling my children this the other day, and the little one said, "Did you have electricity, Mom?" and I was like okay, enough, kid.