It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, "Good job."

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.

You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.

You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.

He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.