Matt Haig Quotes

I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.

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

When I watch 'Glee', it reminds me of my upbringing.

But, on another level it's really sort of this really cool coming of age story, it reminds me of like The Breakfast Club or something like that, if I can be so bold to associate with The Breakfast Club.

'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' by Betty Smith is one of my favorites. Even though it doesn't have any monsters or crazy fantasy in it, it's such a raw story, and I can really relate to the characters. I think it's a beautiful story.

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

Some of my favorite memories happened in the 'Boy Meets World' classroom.

I'm completely obsessed with Andrew Smith's 'Winger.' A great, hilarious, and moving story.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first began to think about what profession I should go into. It was 1978. I was seven and had just been handed over by the women of my family to the earnest and self-important gatherings of the men. I was no longer the responsibility of my aunts and older female cousins. I was now a man. This was a tragedy.

As a lonely teenager growing up in Virginia, I fed off any pop culture that could show me different ways of being from what I saw on 'The Cosby Show' reruns or read about in an Ann M. Martin book.

'Freaks and Geeks' was my favorite show when it was on, by a wide measure. And that's the show I wanted to do. I noodled with the idea of doing a show about teenagers that told small stories, small moments of personal growth.

I can still remember the afternoon, on my 15th birthday, when I opened up 'The Virgin and the Gypsy,' D.H. Lawrence's novella, in my tiny cell in boarding school, and whole worlds of possibility opened out that I had never guessed existed. The language was on fire and sang of liberation.

My favorite book is 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' by Stephen Chbosky.

In my 8th grade yearbook picture I had on 2 chains.

I didn't do anything differently than what my father was doing. It's a really hard family to rebel in. I could have become an accountant. Or I could have become a Republican.

As a teenager especially, I just wanted to do my thing and not be noticed.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

My life is an awkward visit from the kids table.

What we wanted to do was tell a story that felt relatable to anyone who's been a teenager. We haven't all been a second-generation Pakistani-American girl with superpowers, but we've all been 16 and awkward.

I had a couple of really cool friends when I was a kid, and we'd find cool music and movies and show them to each other. My friend Dennis had a copy of 'A Clockwork Orange' and he'd already seen it once, and he was like, 'We need to watch this.' I was sleeping over his house - and I think we were literally 15 - and we watched it.

I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.

My first proper kiss was from Cara Shucksmith when I was 13 or 14 at her birthday party.

Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers?

Some people go through a rebellious phase, and they separate and understand that they're not who their family thinks they are.

Yeah, 'Feed the Dog' is just a really fun, teenage movie with Nat Wolff and Selena Gomez and all these other great people. It's just so silly-funny, and my character's super-fun.