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I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

It's kind of sad, the way we've turned the entertainment of reading into a kind of psychic broccoli - something to feel guilty about if you don't force it on your face-making children while dutifully consuming a few token florets yourself.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

I read for interest and enjoyment, and when I cease to enjoy it I stop.

I feel like it's such an exercise in, like, several things to read a ton of 'Cosmo's or 'Glamour's or whatever, all at once. Because you start realizing how they're just talking about nothing for many pages, and they sort of lull you into this hypnotic state.

In a way, my childhood was one long bunch of pages... I read and read and read.

I loved to read and would read anything that roused my interest, whether it was below my age level or above it, even if I could barely make sense of it.

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.