I am very privileged and honored when someone chooses to read a book, especially a book of mine.

I wrote the book Don't Die, My Love as I was going through radiation, so it certainly has an air of authenticity about it because I was there. I think all of my books took on kind of a deeper tone when the lady who wrote about cancer all of a sudden had cancer. I'm doing well. I went through it all and they said, 'You're fine."

By using novels, I show ordinary kids confronting and overcoming great odds.

So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that's alive in your heart. That's the one you have to write.

I wanted to show what it's really like for 98 percent of the world's population [in the third world]. Plus, I also see there are an awful lot of young people out there doing good things, and I wanted to give them a platform.

Sisters are made by living everyday with each other and wearing each other down until the rough spots are smooth. They're made by sharing secrets you'd never tell mom, and out of doing things for each other just because you feel like it, not because you have to. I guess you could say sisters are 'grown,' not manufactured, in a very special place called a family.

I like to tell young people - you know one in four children die by their own hands - no matter how bad things seem, just wait a day, wait a week. Life will turn around.