42 Quotes by Charles Bock

I always thought of Caesars as the gold standard. I had exactly one date in high school, and my father knew someone who got us comped here for the Sammy Davis Jr. show. We heard 'Candy Man,' 'Mr. Bojangles' - the whole list. And then my date and I went off to the dance - homecoming, I think - where she pretty much ignored me.

I never ran away, but I was very unhappy as a teenager. I felt like a complete nonentity, and I very tangibly have memories of not wanting to be here - in my body.

One older brother of mine collects comics, and when I was younger, I collected them, too.

It wasn't a leap for me to go from not wanting to be in my body as a teenager, not wanting to be in my house, to thinking, 'What would happen if I had disappeared?' And then going from writing scenes of angry kids to thinking a little more about the parents and what their lives would be like.

It's been wonderful to hear so many excited and intelligent responses to 'Beautiful Children,' not only from reviewers but also from the people coming out to my readings.

Every author dreams of the kind of attention that 'Beautiful Children' has received in the press. Obviously, it's a shock whenever it happens. So yeah, I'm as surprised as everybody else.

To me, fiction is the single best way there is - to me, it's the most profound way - of dealing with questions that have no answers.

I remember, even in college, reading Cliffs Notes about a book and thinking to myself, 'Geez, that sounds like a good book. I should probably read it.'

What I try to do is write about forgotten people, and, in a certain sense, we're all forgotten.