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.

Back then, when everybody thought the world would last forever, nobody had time for anything.

After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.

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.

It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

It just so happened that for most of my life I've lived in the suburbs.