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Make no mistake, adolescence is a war. No one gets out unscathed.
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Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It’s much too strict, but it’s a hell of a teacher.
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I don’t necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It’s caring about something that’s utterly meaningless.
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I’m not a big sports fan.
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You can’t have an up without a down, a right without a left, a back without a front - or a happy without a sad.
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The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It’s very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.
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I’d never had money growing up, and it’s never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.
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Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.
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I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row, and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal, and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is, it makes the series limited, you can’t write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.
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When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.
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I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people’s attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope ’The Woods’ does that.
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Hope can be the most wonderful thing in the world or it can crush your heart like an eggshell.
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I can write pretty much anywhere if you give me time and some quiet. The home is not usually the best place because I have four children. It’s usually pandemonium around here!
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I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.
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’Caught’ is a novel of forgiveness, and the past and the present - who should be and who shouldn’t be forgiven. None of my books are ever just about thrills, or it won’t work.
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I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I’m not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
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Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
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If I’m not writing well, I’m not happy. If I’m not spending enough time with my family, I’m not happy. If I’m not connecting to friends or if I don’t work out enough... You get the point. Everything has to be balanced. Nothing should be an extreme.
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Frankly I’m fairly boring or fairly busy. Between writing and family, I have little time for anything else.
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What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don’t write the book where it’s a conspiracy reaching the prime minister I don’t write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.