It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather!
I jog in the morning and then write for about two hours. There are times when I’m really excited and can’t wait to get back to it. But there are days when I don’t know what’s coming next, and I really have to force it.
Not everyone is as nice as us.
You’re responsible for yourself. You messed up your life, and it’s up to you to fix it. No one else is going to do it for you – for any of you.
I’m not stupid. I know everybody thinks I am. I just don’t like answering their questions.
He could hardly lift his spoon during breakfast, and then he was out on the lake, his spoon soon replaced by a shovel.
You have only one life, make the most of it.
Each beat told him he was still alive, at least for one more second.
When I write a novel, every word is mine. I welcome suggestions from my editor, but in the end, I make all the final decisions.
I think of a book and a play, or a book and a movie, as two separate things – I don’t think of it as my novel having a new life.
Not counting ‘Small Steps,’ I think ‘Holes’ is my best book, in terms of plot, and setting, and the way the story revealed itself. It hasn’t changed my life, other than that I have more money than I did before I wrote it. I’m still too close to ‘Small Steps’ to compare it to ‘Holes.’
I guess what led to me writing ‘Holes’ was having moved to Texas in 1991, and it was sort of my reaction to Texas.
I write in the mornings, two or three hours every day, and then at least four times a week I play in a duplicate game at a bridge club. I try to go to tournaments three, four, or five times a year.
Part of me becomes the characters I’m writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.
My parents played bridge, and I remember being fascinated watching them. I sometimes got a chance to sit in on a hand, which I loved. But then I didn’t actually play on my own for about 30 years.
I’m no good at describing my books. ‘Holes’ has been out now for seven years, and I still can’t come up with a good answer when asked what that book is about.
It’s – I write the books and let the market find who reads it. I guess a young adult is anywhere from ten to fifteen.
I didn’t become a good writer until I learned how to rewrite. And I don’t just mean fixing spelling and adding a comma. I rewrite each of my books five or six times, and each time I change huge portions of the story.
I want kids to think that reading can be just as much fun and more so than TV or video games or whatever else they do. I think any other kind of message or morals that I might teach is secondary to first just enjoying a book.
There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.