The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.