Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

A screenwriter heard me read from my novel 'The Wishbones' when it was still in progress and mentioned me to some producers in Hollywood. They called, and I told them I had a novel in my drawer about a high school election that goes haywire. They asked to take a look, and my life changed pretty dramatically as a result.

She told her therapist it reminded her of coming home the summer after her freshman year at Rutgers, stepping back into the warm bath of family and friends, loving it for a week or two, and then feeling trapped, dying to return to school, missing her roommates and her cute new boyfriend, the classes and the parties and the giggly talks before bed, understanding for the first time that that was her real life now, that this, despite everything she'd ever loved about it, was finished for good.

When things don't go well, it helps to think of yourself as a genius and the rest of the world as a bunch of idiots.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

I was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter of 'The Lord of the Rings.

He made me think of all the books I hadn't read, and all the ones I'd read but hadn't fully understood.