I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.

Things are rough all over.

I think that The Outsiders was meant to be written, and I was just picked to write it.

They shouldn't hate each other . . . I don't hate the Socs any more . . . they shouldn't hate . . .

I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be.

We had played a kid's version of gang fighting called "Civil War," and then later we had got in on the real thing, we fought with chains and we fought barefisted and we fought Socs and we fought other grease gangs. It was a normal childhood.

My boyfriend suggested I write two pages a day. He wouldn't take me out if I hadn't done my two pages. That's how I wrote my second novel.