You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset.

You hope that people read your book and say "Yes, this is the way it is or could be." But then you have no way of knowing until the reader reads the book. Actually, the critical response doesn't worry me. I've had very few reviews that have upset me.

...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.

I find that most books that I don't like are those in which the authors have indulged themselves. I can almost sense when they're writing something for themselves.

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

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.

A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.