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Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'

Every time an adult is going to write something for a teenager and you don't have, physically, a person who is that, you are always going to be a little off.

I like writing about teenagers because it's a time of great change and conflict. Up to then, you accept what your parents tell you.

I write for teens partially to work out whatever it was that I needed to from my own teenage years.

I don't have anything new to say about teenagers.

I like to write about teenagers because it's such an uncertain and dramatic time.

Even when I think I'm writing really young, they say it's too mature.

I was the youngest; I had two imperious older brothers - I didn't get to often complete sentences at the dinner table. So writing was a way of saying what nobody asked me to say.

I mean, I don't write for kids.