The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story.

Miss Edmunds was one of his secrets. He was in love with her. Not the kind of silly stuff Ellie and Brenda giggled about on the telephone. This was too real and too deep to talk about, even to think about very much.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.

Our fundamental task as human beings is to seek out connections-to exercise our imaginations.

We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.

There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.