Every time I try to set something in Chicago, I get intimidated by 'Augie March.' It's easy to set something in Indianapolis - we don't have 'Augie March' here. But I love writing about Chicago, and I love being there and imagining lives in Chicago. ...
I enjoy writing about people falling in love, probably because I think the first time you fall in love is the first time that you have to figure out how you're going to orient your life. What are you going to value? What's going to be most important ...
Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they've had fewer of them. It's like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.
We have this habit of romanticizing the lives of writers. I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 'I want to be Kurt Vonnegut.'
I'm a very introverted person. Nothing that's happened has changed that, but one of the reasons I write for teens is it's a real privilege to have a seat at the table in the lives of young people when they're figuring out what matters to them.
I don't think we should see the world of books as fundamentally separate from the world of the Internet. Yes, the Internet contains a lot of videos of squirrels riding skateboards, but it can also be a place that facilitates big conversations about b...
I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city.
I always wondered if there was a purpose to the universe, if there was a plan, if there was some sort of organizing factor, hopefully that I played a role in.
There is a lot of talk in publishing these days that we need to become more like the Internet: We need to make books for short attention spans with bells and whistles - books, in short, that are as much like 'Angry Birds' as possible. But I think tha...
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
I like to know the places I write about. I feel like it helps me ground the novel. My novels are 'realistic novels,' but they can also be fantastical, so it's nice to have a setting that grounds them a little bit.
I was enrolled in divinity school and thought I was going to become a minister - I'm Episcopalian - but I was disavowed of that notion pretty quickly while working at the hospital. I found myself really unfulfilled by the answers that are traditional...
I've read a lot of bad books. I used to review books for a living, and when you're a reviewer you read tons of terrible books.
My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.
'Will Grayson, Will Grayson' is about two guys named Will Grayson who live in different Chicago suburbs who eventually meet each other.
Videogame players essentially choose whether to win the game or to die heroically. There's a certain glory in both.
I like to build places online where readers can have productive conversations about books.
Read a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot.
Different authors write different ways, have different relationships with their audiences, and those are all legitimate.
These little contradictions are in all of us. They're in me at least. And so I forgot that I had been awake for 30 hours and kept walking, grateful to be a little boat full of water, still floating.
Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it." [ , Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012]
