I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.

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.

A new sickness invaded Jerry, the sickness of knowing what he had become, another animal, another beast, another violent person in a violent world, inflicting damage, not disturbing the universe but damaging it.

I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.

I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I have always had a sense that we are all pretty much alone in life, particularly in adolescence.