More people thought I was strange because I was a teenage novelist, not because I was from Oklahoma. That's where I got the looks like I was from the zoo.

I like having a private name and a public name. It helps keep things straight.

I could write and help a lot of kids, or teach and help a few and go nuts.

I think that 'The Outsiders' was meant to be written, and I was just picked to write it.

Manmohan Desai's films pack a lot of joy and have a child-like quality and you can see the director is having fun, but my movies don't suspend disbelief that much. But it's good to be compared to Manmohan Desai. He was run down by critics in his time.

The older I get, the more I see that there really aren't huge zeniths of happiness or a huge abyss of darkness as much as there used to be. I tend to walk a middle ground.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.