When I was growing up, there actually wasn't a lot of YA literature as it exists today. Most of the YA that I read was from the '60s and '70s, older than me.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

I realized how wonderful YA is and how I really wanted to write something that created that level of intrigue.

When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book.

'Dystopian,' by definition, promises a darker story.

Every generation has a macabre notion that wars, government prohibition, natural disasters or mankind itself could be the downfall of society and the world as a whole.

Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen.

Eventually I realize that I am holding on to him just as tightly as he holds on to me. And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.

Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive.

I think she’s brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.