I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.

Guilt [is] a tool, rather than a weapon against the self.

I decide to do what I always do when I'm not sure what's going on: I act like everyone else.

I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction, obviously, but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

Little girl, he called me. A little girl who is stressed out to the point of paranoia. That is not me, but now, it's who the Candor think I am.

This concept could easily have gone awry. Stories about love tend to go that way sometimes. They wander into the realm of cheese and never return, which I think is a shame, because there is a way to write about romantic love without breaking out the Velveeta.

I laugh shakily. ‘You’re a little scary, Four.’ ‘Do me a favor,’ he says, ‘and don’t call me that.’ ‘What should I call you, then?’ ‘Nothing.’ He takes his hand from my face. ‘Yet.