Sara Zarr Quotes

I had never heard of 'young adult novels,' which I guess are about teenage gangs and the new boy in town or something.

I started writing my first book for young people when I was in college. I was only a couple of years out of my teens when I began; I felt closer to that experience than I did as an adult. But I've always been drawn to stories about young people.

Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?

I think I draw most inspiration from writers like Richelle Mead and filmmakers like John Hughes. They both really understand the experience of being a teenager and how insistent and intense everything feels, but they're also smart, savvy, and fun.

Sixteen is a hard time. A lot of kids are experimenting with things.

When I wrote my first story, all the characters were teenagers because I think 16, 17 is a great age.

I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young characters.

I'd never really considered doing young-adult novels, but one of the things that a friend pointed out to me is that I've actually had a teenage character in almost every adult novel that I've written.

The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.

I always wanted to make a coming-of-age film, or something about growing up, like 'The Wonder Years,' 'Stand By Me' or 'Diner.'

I'd been writing my own coming-of-age story, and I got to take a lot of that energy and a lot of those moments and themes that I wanted to explore in a much smaller film and then apply them to 'Spider-Man: Homecoming.'

I still have a YA-genre-series type of a book in me that I really want to tell.

I thought Korra was 17 so Mike and I have to get our stories straight. The main characters are in their late teens, we've always loved those kind of teen love triangle type stories and there was plenty of that in the original series.

Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes.

I think that's what distinguishes YA from adult fiction - it's not just the age of the characters, but it's the sense of hope. Because I don't think I've ever read a YA book that feels completely hopeless at the end.

Every teenager feels like a freak. It's part of being a teenager, part of the individuation from child to adult - those teenage years are who am I? What am I? Where am I going?

The first album was a coming-of-age album - I don't like the phrase, but when you listen to it, you can tell I was having a hard time, that I wasn't socially relating to people.

I feel like we're always learning about ourselves, but at twelve, you're learning big things that shape your identity.

I've played a lot of teenagers and I think sometimes they tend to make them a bit too mushy, because you're not actually connected to yourself at all really when you're a teenager.

Growing up, I had a bit of an identity crisis.

I always find myself gravitating toward stories of transformation, and one of those periods is teenage life. When teenagers are figuring out who they are and have one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood - I think that's a really mythic moment to tell stories about.

For me, there's a deeper genre appreciation for what a coming of age story can be about. To apply that to a superhero world, for me, that was very exciting.

I always say that I take my life and turn it into story, and I certainly did that with 'Countdown'.

A lot of shows and movies that have tried to represent teenagers or the chaos that is coming at that age, they shy away from it, romanticize it, or they kind of fantasize what it's like to be a teenager.

I went through so many phases when I was young - surfer girl, tom boy, punk - but they weren't mistakes, just moments.