I can’t really work on more than one thing at a time.
Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.
I really feel like the gift is also the curse. It’s always half-and-half. Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay.
Any institution becomes a community – whether it’s a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.
After a while, the characters I’m writing begin to feel real to me. That’s when I know I’m heading in the right direction.
Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they’re not around. Too much free time!
It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn’t going anywhere, it wasn’t going to desert her now.
I’ve been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.
When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character.
Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.
I think growing up is difficult and it’s a process that I’m always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.
The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her – she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don’t.
It’s not finding what’s lost, it’s understanding what you’ve found.
I wasn’t good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.
Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you’re left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.
A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.
Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.
We are only an instant, that’s true. But we are eternal.
I can hurt myself more than anyone else can, she told her sister. I can do it with my eyes closed.
Another world must surely exist somewhere one where she would be known in some deep way that was far beyond words.