High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you're there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified.

Perhaps this is how you know you're doing the thing you're intended to: No matter how slow or how slight your progress, you never feel that it's a waste of time.

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try

We all make mistakes, don't we? But if you can't forgive yourself, you'll always be an exile in your own life.

People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating

We have to make mistakes, its how we learn compassion for others

I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.

Obviously the bar is much higher now for a behavior to be scandalous. Social media has really changed the way people live. It's not a new impulse; it's just being enacted in a new way.

I don't think it's shameful to admit that some days your time can be better spent reading than writing.

I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors

The road to wealth is sown with false starts and failures that should in no way discourage the poor who make good or our neighbors with new found riches. We have to give it our all.

and beware those whoonly takeinstructions from theirGodfor they havefailed completely to live their ownlives.

Never compare your insides to someone else's outsides.

There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.

People of higher talent work, even if they seem to do nothing

I came to America when I was seven and a half in 91. I think the first full length book in English that I read was Return to Oz when I was nine years old.

When I walk home at night I don't have to worry about anything. But when a woman walks home at night she gotta think about a lot of different things.

Men and women, boys and girls, are still bowing to the image of peer pressure out on their own Plain of Dura every week in every city of America.

In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.