In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?

And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.

I have a friend who says that reviewers are the tickbirds of the literary rhinoceros-but he is being kind. Tickbirds perform a valuable service to the rhino and the rhino hardly notices the birds.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

Our memory is a monster; you forget it - it does not.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

A part of adolescence is feelimg that there's no one else around who's enough like youself to understand you.