The teenage years are such a great subject because everything is heightened and on the surface, and it deals with universal emotions that we face even as we get older.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you're a teenager, your essence is so specific to being a teenager, and everything becomes so extreme. Your emotions are on the surface, and you oscillate between different things at one time.
I'm so associated with being young and being with a teenager.
Teenagers come to things fresh and can really teach us an awful lot.
I'm obsessed with adolescence. I love to write about people in their 20s. It's such a fraught and exciting and kind of horrible time.
Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.
Teenage years are hard. And, having taught high school for a number of years, I think they're particularly hard on teenage girls. The most self-conscious human beings on the planet are teenage girls.
I watch a lot of teen TV and read a lot of YA novels. I also talk to teens whenever I can. There are cultural differences between when I was a teen and now, but emotions - anger, angst, love - are the same.
Teens affect history. They affect lives; they affect our cultural growth and change, and yet, and at the same time, they are often the most vulnerable among us.
I never really had a teenage experience. I went from childhood to maturity, and in some ways, it short-circuited me emotionally.
The teenage years are ridiculously crucial and hard and, um, awkward.