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.

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 wonder how you’re supposed to know the exact moment when there’s no more hope.

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...

My whole life has been one big broken promise.

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

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.

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…...

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.

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?

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

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

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.

Forgetting isn’t enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone?...

I was a ‘learn by doing’ writer – I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.

the past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.

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

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.

There’s a lot that is awful. That’s the struggle of getting old. To make sure you don’t let what’s hard…obscure the beauty.

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old.

I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I’m getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

I always felt that church is where I’m going to find my community and people to live my life with.

And I don’t just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you—the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who...

I didn’t ‘decide’ to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

It’s as if once you hit high school, you’re programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.

I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer’s DNA – something so deeply embedded in us that even we don’t notice it until we’ve written three or four books.

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ and being so overwhelmed with emotion.

We’d walk home together in the foggy summer night and I’d tell her about sex; the good stuff, like how it could be warm and exciting–it took you away–and the not-so-good things, like how once...

I have no desire to go back to San Francisco.

Katy skipped over, her low-rise jeans threatening to fall off her skinny hips. With some girls, that was a sexy look. With Katy, it made you nervous.

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.

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

*Story of a Girl By:Sara Zarr*Lexile:760 SRC:12 pts.*Personal Issues*Choice of getting a job to move out*Major Choice*In Process of making it happen*It effects her bother his girlfriend and their baby, because they will move out...

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...

Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!”A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt?

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. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

The one reader I’m trying to please as I write is me, and I’m pretty difficult to please.

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.

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....

I get a message from my dad. In the mood I’m in, I tear up to see his name in my inbox, and imagine him down the hall in bed, propped on pillows, emailing me....

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.

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.

No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you.

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

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...

I’m so focused on trying to craft the story that I’m in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I’m trying to please as I write is me, and I’m...

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...

It’s like a Venn diagram of tragedy.

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