It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too.

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

We couldn't get along without him. We needed Johnny as much as he needed the gang. And for the same reason.

Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.

I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.

...but I've never regretted it. You can't regret experience.

I never base a character on someone I know. You can get ideas from real life, but every character you write is some aspect of yourself.