Sara Zarr Quotes

Is it good, bad, or neutral to recognize thematic patterns in your own work? When it comes to recurring themes, I’m of the mind that knowledge is probably not power, at least in terms of the work.

Life needed a fast forward button. Because there were days you just don’t want to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it.

I didn’t ‘decide’ to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

The one reader I’m trying to please as I write is me, and I’m pretty difficult to please.

My books have been translated into various languages and sold in other countries, but I never have any contact with the foreign publishers and am so disconnected from that process that it seems almost imaginary. With ‘How to Save a Life’, I worked closely with Usborne editors and have been involved in the publicity.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

My whole life has been one big broken promise.

Family or love or romance, whatever it is, is not restricted to perfect people. If it were, it wouldn’t exist. All of that comes out in my work in some way.

he’s a story i want to know from page one

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books.

You were never what I wanted to forget.

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

we had each other. I never needed anyone else. That’s the difference between you and me. You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed one person. Only ever needed you.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

I have no desire to go back to San Francisco.

My first published book, ‘Story of a Girl’, was the fourth book I wrote.

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, ‘Story of a Girl’, was the fourth book I wrote.

It’s just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.

The Lord doesn’t give a person more than he knows they can bear.

I don’t want to pretend like I’m some intellectual person who understands Flannery O’Connor.

That’s how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don’t have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say.

Sometimes rescue comes to you. It just shows up, and you do nothing. Maybe you deserve it, maybe you don’t. But be ready, when it comes, to decide if you will take the outstretched hand and let it pull you ashore.

I’m so focused on trying to craft the story that I’m in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I’m trying to please as I write is me, and I’m pretty difficult to please.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I’m getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

Because love, love never finishes.

I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ and being so overwhelmed with emotion.

When a young reader tells you that they’d never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks… that’s just rewarding and humbling.

I’m not really a plot writer – I’m more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.

Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.

When my characters are questioning things, it’s not me leading up to an answer; it’s me asking those same questions and letting the characters’ lives unfold and seeing where it takes them.

Making lists of favorite things is, for me, a task ridden with anxiety. What if I’ve accidentally excluded something I love? What if I discover something new tomorrow that I love even more?

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn’t room for what I wanted to write.

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old.

Ethan couldn’t possibly understand it, what Cameron and I meant to each other and how different it was from anything like a romance or a crush.

That’s how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I’m still waiting.

I looked at my hand resting on the shelf of the prop cabinet, thinking of the scars that were there whether anyone could see them or not.

I’m always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.

I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. We were part of a church that belonged to the California Jesus movement.

I was a ‘learn by doing’ writer – I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.