The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

It would be the death of all creativity for me if I had to sit there and be concerned with the sensibilities of a fourteen-year-old kid. Some fourteen-year-olds would revel in the book, and some would be very sensitive to it, so you can't afford to worry about that. What I worry about is good taste and getting my message across by whatever means I can.

We all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing --- discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day --- a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours--- and so's publication.

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I am frightened by today's world, terrified by it. I think that comes out in the books. I'm afraid of big things. Some of these schools have three thousand kids, and even the size of the schools frightens me. Big government frightens me; so does big defense.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.