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.

I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there.

Dally was so real he scared me.

I made up my mind that I'd get out of that place and I didI learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life, you just have to work till you make it.

They grew up on the outside of society. They weren't looking for a fight. They were looking to belong.

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.

You know what the crummiest feeling you can have is? To hate the person you love the best in the world.