Sara Zarr

“No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you.”

“*Story of a Girl By:Sara Zarr*Lexile:760 SRC:12 pts.*Personal Issues*Choice of getting a job to move out*Major Choice*In Process of making it happen*It effects her bother his girlfriend and their baby, because they will move out with her too.*Sometimes we need to take choices that will make your life easier and also others.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I always felt that church is where I'm going to find my community and people to live my life with.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.”

“Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!''A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt?”

“I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.”

“I wonder how you're supposed to know the exact moment when there's no more hope.”

“I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't notice it until we've written three or four books.”

“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.”

“Forgetting isn't enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound.”

“Readers want a story, not a pattern. It's the specifics of a story that make it really ping our various reader radars.”

“I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward.”