My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

don’t mistake a new place for a new you.

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old.

I know I shouldn't say this—I know it as surely as I know the earth is round and beats are evil—and yet here it comes: “It's not too late to change your mind.

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

Try a little tenderness.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.