Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

Certain elements of teen life that, 10 years ago, were very important to me still, are becoming less so as I get older. I mean, Ive kinda gotten over, I guess Im saying, the fact that I had trouble getting a date for the prom.

I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.

We must curb ourfury, and allow sadness to diminish, and speak our stories with coolness and deliberation.

We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

...for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family, and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways, immobile and thus unfettered.