[ Adult novels] was the world of grownups. There was nothing about teenagers.

Isn't that interesting. All the book clubs. I've never belonged to one.

Its all about your determination, I think, as much as anything. There are a lot of people with talent, but its that determination.

I thought ["Summer Sisters" ] would be a children's book - two girls who summer together from very different backgrounds. And then when it just kept going and going and going. They kept getting older.

[When I was a kid] I was a surgeon, amputating legs and arms of my paper dolls. And I had a little board with little tacks that I would tack them down to do this.

I was sick all the time, one exotic illness after another, which lasted throughout my twenties. My worst decade. But from the day the first book was accepted, I never got sick again. Writing changed my life.

My insides still turn over when he looks at me that certain way.