John Corey Whaley

“I've been an assistant to a folklorist and a teacher. There may or may not have been some sandwich-making at a certain sub chain in my past as well.”

“Approaching my second novel was, admittedly, a bit of a struggle. But having an amazing team at Atheneum Books, especially my very patient, brilliant editor Namrata Tripathi, took a stressful situation and turned it into a really great learning experience for me.”

“I grew up in a little town with about 6,000 or 7,000 people. I always knew from 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write about growing up in a place like that that's small and you don't fit into.”

“I've found that a combination of therapy and medication, along with lifestyle choices like eating better and exercising regularly, helps me cope well with my anxiety.”

“My family and friends have been monumentally supportive from well before I was a published author.”

“I did some research on cryonics and cryogenics, but I kept it to a minimum because I didn't want the science part of the novel to overshadow the fiction. Being medically accurate wasn't my main goal.”

“Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.”

“Dr. Webb says that life is so full of complications and confusion that humans oftentimes find it hard to cope. This leads to people throwing themselves in front of trains and spending all their money and not speaking to their relatives and never going home for Christmas and never eating anything with chocolate in it.Life, he says, doesn't have to be so bad all the time. We don't have to be so anxious about everything. We can just be. We can get up, anticipate that the day will probably have a few good moments and a few bad ones, and then just deal with it. Take it all in and deal as best as we can.”

“I love meeting readers and booksellers and am beyond overwhelmed and gratified at the reception. Each day feels like an adventure.”

“I thought, 'What if I were 17, and it was my small town of Springhill, Louisiana? How would I feel if people started flooding in to see some bird?'”

“Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.”

“You're both living these lives you didn't choose to live in a world full of people telling you what that's supposed to mean. That's messed up.”

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

“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”

“Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you let me know how that works for you.Bacause I'm gessing it'll never be enough.”

“I'm beyond thrilled to be working with Faber, whose literary history is second to none. And I'm even more excited to bring my books to a wider audience in the U.K.”

“I remember, for the first time, sitting down and consuming books in a matter of hours. This was such a new experience for me because reading, up until that point, had been such a struggle and source of stress. I think I just needed to find the right kind of stories with which I could identify.”

“What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again.”

“Watch it,' her mom snapped. 'Don't start a fight just because it's the easiest thing to do.”

“We've learned from this that death can hurt us. It can surprise us. It can scare us. It can keep us up a night. But we've also learned the things that death cannot do. It cannot crush our hopes. It cannot take away the love and support of our family and friends. It cannot make us lose our unending faith in world and in God. It has saddened us, but it will not prevail.”