Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.

She's called the secretary, but as far as I can tell she basically runs the school.

Well, it's simple to love someone," she said. "But it's hard to know when you need to say it out loud.

I love a book that makes me ask questions about what I think or how I see the world or how I feel, so I hope that 'Goodbye, Stranger' is that kind of book for some people.

Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.

I think I'm still fed by my childhood experience of reading, even though obviously I'm reading many books now and a lot of them are books for children but I feel like childhood reading is this magic window and there's something that you sort of carry for the rest of your life when a book has really changed you as a kid, or affected you, or even made you recognize something about yourself.

I feel like there are stages in many, many people's childhoods when you don't have one good friend. It can happen a lot in sixth and seventh grade because that's when things are changing so quickly. It's like a desperate dash for some kind of acceptable identity, and it can get ugly.