You know it’s them books what make you talk funny.

I didn't like being alone. Being alone was slightly better than having to deal with people, that's all. Or so I'd convinced myself.

And you're figuring out who you are, and you haven't yet become stagnant in your thinking. You haven't solidified. And one thing that I find is that a lot of grown-ups tend to look back on their high school or middle school years and say, "Oh, thank God all that's over."

Also, as an author, character has always been what I'm most interested in - much more so than plot or setting, although those are good things too.

I did a lot of research on a couple different things. One was, how do people handle hating themselves and hating others? And hatred is a secondary emotion, I think; it always springs from something else ... usually fear, that's probably what it is. So I looked a lot at that.

You know it’s them books what make you talk funny.

We all mess up. It's what we learn from our mistakes that matters.