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" My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head. "

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" Movies can't ruin books. They can only ruin movies. "

" When I was young, all the books were about a Mary Jane and the football player and the prom and ending up with the quiet guy and making your mom happy. "

" I always try to write the best I can. "

" I like having a private name and a public name. It helps keep things straight. "

" I was a tomboy and most of my close friends were male. "

" I do feel that the boys are getting left out. Girls will read boys' books, but boys won't read girls' books. If you're writing for a girl, you've got most of the audience on your side anyway. "

" I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise. "

" Since I am first of all a character writer, that character's emotions are as vivid to me as my own. I always begin with an emotion after I have established a character in my mind. I feel what they feel. I guess that is why it comes across so strongly. "

" When I was in high school, the genders were so separate from each other. If you weren't 'dating' somebody, you couldn't just be friends with somebody. "

" How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell. "

" I could write and help a lot of kids, or teach and help a few and go nuts. "

" I go straight from thinking about my narrator to being him. "

" My husband and I get along great. We're both introverts, and it's hard to make new friends. "

" I grew up with my cousins, who were as close as brothers, and frankly, I didn't like what girls were expected to do. I liked horseback riding, playing football, going to rodeos. I wanted to be in jeans all the time, and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to conform to a certain standard, so I didn't. "

" Any writer who gives a reader a pleasurable experience is doing every other writer a favor because it will make the reader want to read other books. I am all for it. "

" More people thought I was strange because I was a teenage novelist, not because I was from Oklahoma. That's where I got the looks like I was from the zoo. "

" 'The Outsiders' cast in particular was a joy to be around - sweet kids, normal goofy teenagers off camera and serious artists on. They were great. I never got them mixed up with the characters, though. Each of them had his own strong personality. "

" I just felt being part of my peer group so strongly. I was immersed in teen culture, but not taken in by it. "

" My goal from being a child was to have a happy home life. "

" My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was an extremely cold man. "

" Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff. "

" I think that 'The Outsiders' was meant to be written, and I was just picked to write it. "

" If you enjoy reading something, read it. "

" Sometimes, I feel like I spent the first part of my life wishing to be a teen-age boy, and the second part condemned to being one. "

" I grew up here and my friends are here. There's nothing wrong with here. "

" Naturally, everything boils down to relationships in my books. "

" If people want to find me, they can. They'll see a middle-aged woman wandering around the grocery store, looking to see what to buy for dinner. "

" I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money. "

" The thing is, the Tulsa experience that I wrote about in 'The Outsiders' is closer to the universal experience than it would be if I wrote it from L.A. or New York. It's an everyman story. "

" When I see a movie with someone it's kind of uncomfortable. "