“I clap because I know what will happen when I stop. It's the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie - one that I've lost myself to - which is that I'll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn't make any sense.”

American young adult fiction author

Gayle Forman is an American young adult fiction author, best known for her novel If I Stay. The book reached the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list for Young Adult Fiction and was later adapted into a film of the same name. She writes for young adult readers and is most closely associated with If I Stay, the work that brought her widest recognition. Her public profile rests on that novel and its film adaptation, which extended its reach beyond the page.