Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.

Hormones are very powerful things. We are helpless in their wake.

every seven miles, in America, there is at least one McDonald's. Not a hospital, mind you, or a police station, but a McDonald's, every seven miles. I mean, that's sort of scary, if you think about it.

I felt as if the Milky Way, hovering above our heads like a celestial pitcher, had suddenly overturned, pouring suns and planets down my throat. Stars seemed to be shooting out of my finger and toes, the ends of my hair.

My mother's psychologist says I have an overactive anger switch, but people just keep pissing me off.

Smiles like that should be against the law. Considering what they do to a girl.

Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.