The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

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.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

I really wanted to be a musician, but it turned out I had no sense of time.

Meg was going to have to learn for herself what Laurie had figured out over the summer - that it was better to leave well enough alone, to avoid unnecessary encounters with the people you'd left behind, to not keep poking at that sore tooth with the tip of your tongue. Not because you didn't love them anymore, but because you did, and because that love was useless now, just another dull ache in your phantom limb.

If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.