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.

We often think that tragedies happen because of great earthquakes in people's lives. I think they sometimes occur because of small things that become obsessive to a particular person.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.

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.

A novel must work as a story because no one's going to get to the other themes if you don't entertain the reader. But I like to have another layer of meaning, although you can read the book on one level and not bother with that other layer.

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