Quotes from Sara Zarr

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books.

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years.

What brings two people together anyway?

The one thing that could never die or be buried was my loyalty to Cameron for everything he'd done for me and what we'd been through together, even if that loyalty was a ghost.

That's how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don't have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say.

Because love, love never finishes.

I'm still going to love you, always. And in the rock-paper-scissors of life, love is rock. fear, anger, everthing else...no contest.

I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.

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.

The kind of life I want is to be a person who would get a personal note every day.

When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks... that's just rewarding and humbling.

Sometimes you should have something you don't need but that you want.

Sometimes you want to hear your own mother's voice.

Don't ask me how I am,' I blurt. 'Please.' I want to keep feeling good. Just because the lights are on doesn't mean I have to look.

I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. We were part of a church that belonged to the California Jesus movement.

I don't want to pretend like I'm some intellectual person who understands Flannery O'Connor.

When my characters are questioning things, it's not me leading up to an answer; it's me asking those same questions and letting the characters' lives unfold and seeing where it takes them.

I have no desire to go back to San Francisco.

My books have been translated into various languages and sold in other countries, but I never have any contact with the foreign publishers and am so disconnected from that process that it seems almost imaginary. With 'How to Save a Life', I worked closely with Usborne editors and have been involved in the publicity.

Readers want a story, not a pattern. It's the specifics of a story that make it really ping our various reader radars.

Family or love or romance, whatever it is, is not restricted to perfect people. If it were, it wouldn't exist. All of that comes out in my work in some way.

We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.

I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.