Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.

I love surprises! That's what is great about reading. When you open a book, you never know what you'll find.

The flash would prove that proton decay really happens. The flash would mean that the matter of the proton - the solid stuff - had turned into the energy of the flash (E-mc2). Totally. Nothing left behind. No ash. No smoke. No smell. Nada. One moment it's there, the next moment - pffft - gone. What would it mean? Only this: Nothing lasts. Nothing. Because everything that exists is made of protons.

You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered

Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.

We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past "weird" and "strange" and "goofy." Her ways knocked us off balance.

This was the ghetto: where children grow down instead of up.