I think if you can take something out and it doesn't change the book, it doesn't need to be there.

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean.

I don't know whether I could visit a new neighborhood now and have a kid's set of observations about a place. I no longer can really think like a child, though I can remember thinking like one.

Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.

Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter.

The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.

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