Deb Caletti

To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.

I think a setting is hugely important. I look at setting as a character with its own look, sound, history, quirks, goofy temperaments and moods.

I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.

Like all kids with divorced parents, I have an abundance of holidays.

I understood right from the start that every set of library doors were the sort of magic portals that lead to other lands. My God, right within reach there were dinosaurs and planets and presidents and girl detectives!

Sometimes good choices are really bad ones, wrapped up in so much fear you can't even see straight.

All of my books come from something that I happen to be working out at a given point in my life. It's kind of self-therapy.

If you think about becoming a writer, that's just really one of the big dreams I had. It's really important to have those dreams and pursue your passions.

Often, marriage was solitude, with company.

I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.

I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for.

All of us create our own versions of an event, of our lives, even, not because we're liars, necessarily, but because we can only see and understand the truth from our own viewpoint, and a shifting viewpoint at that.