Adam Silvera

“Memories: some can be sucker punching, others carry you forward; some stay with you forever, others you forget on your own. You can’t really know which ones you’ll survive if you don’t stay on the battlefield, bad times shooting at you like bullets. But if you’re lucky, you’ll have plenty of good times to shield you.”

“I look up, and Jackson's eyes find mine. For a second, it almost feels like we're about to race into the hole to join you. Being buried alive has got to be better than whatever comes next.”

“The book industry is all about community, and it never really feels like anyone is competing against anyone, thankfully.”

“I was very lucky to befriend many authors before even signing with an agent, and they were all so supportive of me when I told them I was in the middle of my first book.”

“Absence is absence, you know? The loss of someone can be just as devastating if they're alive as if they're dead.”

“I guess I could call this energy freedom. No one will be around to judge me tomorrow. No one will send messages to his friends about the lame kid who had no rhythm. And in this moment, how stupid it is to care hits me like a punch to the face.”

“I have OCD and, literally, walking on the left, needing things to be in even numbers with few exceptions. One and seven, any number that ends in seven, that's all me. All the tics like the pulling of the ear and scratching of the palms, all me.”

“Every universe I’ve created lately, your face keeps popping up in it. And I thought that if you can’t be cool with that, then I wouldn’t hate you, but I might need some time for myself until we’ve had enough distance that I can imagine made-up worlds without you automatically appearing.”

“Yes, we live, or we're given the chance to, at least, but sometimes living is hard and complicated because of fear.”

“'They Both Die At The End' is about coming face to face with your own mortality.”

“It wasn't until I hit 20 that I became an obsessive reader, I think, which feels a little funny considering I was a bookseller for five years and have been reviewing YA novels for four years.”

“I had definitely missed the literary development game with Paper Lantern Lit, and writing exclusively wasn't giving me complete fulfillment.”

“I'm definitely of the 'Harry Potter'-transfigured-me-into-a-reader-and-writer generation. And that's really all I read throughout my teen years, because I really devoted all my time to writing and reading friends' fan-fiction.”

“But hey, if there’s one bright side to your dying, it’s that you aren’t around to tell me things I don’t like hearing. I’m sorry. That was a dickhead thing to say. I need a condom for my mouth.”

“Especially with grief and heartbreak, you can go through these things and think, 'I will never be whole again.'”

“Puzzles are sort of like life because you can mess up and rebuild later, and you're likely smarter the next time around.”

“My first book was on the grittier side of life. A week before being published, I realized all of my main characters come from single households. That was something that, when I lived in South Bronx, that's what it was like.”

“I've spent years living safely to secure a longer life, and look where that's gotten me. I'm at the finish line but I never ran the race.”

“All my books center around death in some way.”

“Death is the one - the one thing we don't have many answers for. We understand how people die, but we don't know what comes next, and that's something that's always fascinated and disturbed me and frustrated me.”