I sometimes get tired because I can seldom read a book for pleasure. I'm like the play reviewer who happens to go to a play on an off day and can't help but view it critically.

I'm not a reader of young adult fiction for the simple reason that these novelists are writing for adolescents, so they are not writing for me.

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

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

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

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

You bring up your children to be self-reliant and independent and they double-cross you and become self-reliant and independent.