I'm in loooove with this boy, and when you in love with someone, you don't give up on 'em, mo matter what.

It's unfair how the kids who are starving for attention tended to be so annoying that people had no inclination to give it to them.

Curse false-hand-holding boys!

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've written a lot of novels for teens and tweens ... but I'd never really tackled the North Carolina side of me. And it's so strong and so important, and yet I hadn't acknowledged it. And so one of the things I wanted to do in "Shine" is take that on.

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.

Knowledge was more powerful than fear. Love was stronger than hate.