Quotes from Sara Zarr

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

Making lists of favorite things is, for me, a task ridden with anxiety. What if I've accidentally excluded something I love? What if I discover something new tomorrow that I love even more?

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn't control, full of surprises, and they weren't always good. Life wasn't what you made it. You were what life made you.

My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.

I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.

That's how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I'm still waiting.

I don't like to do too much psychological research because it might turn a character into a patchwork.

My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.

I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.

That's how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I'm still waiting.

The importance of our connection, what it meant to find each other again, the way it made what happened to us and between us not be a waste, not be for nothing. He would know, he had to know, that not saying good-bye would be the worst end of all.

Sitting and waiting for something to happen was the worst kind of torture.

Ethan and I are done, I said finally. I'm sorry. He was my first boyfriend. I know. The only real boyfriend I've had. I'm a senior in high school and he was my only real boyfriend. I know. And I won't find another one at Jones Hall. That is guaranteed. Okay. This is all very sad and tragic, I said. Alan unwrapped a sleeve of Smarties. Yet, oddly, you don't seem that upset. I know.

My whole life has been one big broken promise.

Try a little tenderness ...

Live in the present. Take care of the relationships in front of you now. Most friendships have a natural life, and when they've lived that out, you'll know.

the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That's the unfinished business between us. because love, love is never finished.

I never had a connection like that to anyone, where every day you think about what you'll tell them and you wonder what they're doing, and you know they're wondering what you're doing.

I looked at my hand resting on the shelf of the prop cabinet, thinking of the scars that were there whether anyone could see them or not.

I don't want these memories to become slippery, to just disappear into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick – even the bad ones – so I repeat them often.