John Corey Whaley Quotations

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

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 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.

I don't think anyone, no matter what, can find perfect happiness until they understand exactly who they are and how every little thing they do can affect the world around them. I think perfect happiness would be a world where everyone is constantly striving to understand everyone else.

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?'

I was a terrible reader as a kid. I mean terrible. Super slow and very unfocused. It took me forever to read a book, and I remember being well into high school and still needing my mom to sit down and read aloud to me so I could pass my English tests and such.

I was thrilled when this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature went to Neal Schusterman's 'Challenger Deep.' This brilliant book takes you into the mind of a mentally ill teenager and deserves all the accolades it's received.

Writing was, is, and will always be my favorite job.

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.

Dealing with chronic anxiety has taught me to better understand the nuances of mental illness and the very individual nature of it.

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'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.

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

I know what it's like to be from an incredibly small town and the oppressiveness of it and the desire to get out. But I didn't realize that readers in Seattle, New York, and San Francisco might not get that so instinctively.

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

I regret waiting until my mid-twenties to really start seeing the world. I think I should have taken more risks when I was younger and worried less about being ready to grow up.

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.

In the middle of my fourth year teaching is when I got my book contract - in 2010. I knew the book would come out in May 2011.

Call it egotistical or narcissist, but I think that's what we all look for in books - the right stories that help us make sense of the world that we, on a very personal level, live in every day.

If I'm really under pressure to get work done, I can adapt to most situations, but I prefer to be at home, in a comfortable chair, with as few distractions as possible.

I do come from a very close family. And I'm fascinated, in particular, with family relationships and the relationships that we all form with friends who feel as close, if not closer, than family.

I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.

Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.

Not only had my brother disappeared, but--and bear with me here--a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.

I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don't pretend to be happy. Don't pretend to care only about their problems.

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.

I often found myself in situations where I had, without thinking, said too much to too many with too little caution.

You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.

The thing to know about my brother was that even though he was fifteen, he looked to be about the same age as me. Only, I'm not sure if that was because he looked older or I looked younger. I like to think it was a healthy mixture of both.

A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future,

No matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.

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.

I jotted down Oslo After Death. This would be a great title for a book, I thought. That is what I do sometimes. I jot down titles for books that I one day intend to write.

I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.

People dreamed. People left. And they all came back.

Your mind has a way of not letting you forget things you wish you could. Especially with people. Like, you'll always try your best to forget things that people say to you or about you, but you always remember. And you'll try to forget things you've seen that no one should see, but you just can't do it. And when you try to forget someone's face, you can't get it out of your head.