CHRIS CRUTCHER

I think the value in books like mine, and a great number by other talented writers, is in the ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark, where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike.

If we're going to make a real dent in the bullying issue, we're going to have to address the bullies themselves: find ways to help empower them that don't include allowing them to be predators or to simply be punished.

It seems to me if you don't know anything about child development you shouldn't intimate in your 'reporting' that you do.

I can't think of a subject that is taboo for me, unless it's one I simply don't know anything about.

The value of a story like 'Deadline' is kids get to look at death at the perfect distance. They can put the book down. They can experience the story, rub up against it, but it's not real life.

Nothing about life is sacred until we make it so.

As much as we'd like to think life is sacred, there's not a lot of evidence for that. The universe is maddeningly casual, giving and taking it.

If you've seen 'Friday Night Lights' - that was just like my town.

Censors can make a case for zero tolerance in language. They can make the argument that since we don't allow our children to use that language in schools, we also shouldn't give them stories in which it is used.

You have to be careful not to use anything too colloquial or you date the book.

I was pretty anti-academic, and I wasn't much of a student. I had a really short attention span and did not get a lot out of high school academically. I think college was a little the same way.

Any writer my age almost can't get away from being influenced by Kurt Vonnegut, partially because of his simple, clear way of stating things. To read Vonnegut is to learn how to use economy words.

If we are to stop bullying in schools, we have to start with teachers and administrators. If we want to stop it, we have to stop it.

'Whale Talk' is a tough book, but it is also a compassionate book about telling the truth and about redemption. I didn't draw the tough parts out of thin air; they are stories handed to me by people in pain.

Certainly working with teens keeps me up to date with language and with certain kinds of thinking.

I don't think I'll ever lose the feeling that I had when I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - Harper Lee was going back into her childhood. I grew up in a real small town - Lee's was in the South, mine the Northwest - but small towns have a lot in common. There was such a revelation in knowing that a story could be told like that.

When you're watching somebody read your material and they smile and nod, you know you've found that place where your experience and their experience match, even though they aren't the same exact experience.

Certainly working with teens keeps me up to date with language and with certain kinds of thinking. I often feel like I have to go back to that 17-year-old Chris Crutcher, and that forms the core voice. I can draw on teens from 1964 to 2001 to find a part of the voice I need.

Being an outsider means not being heard, not having a voice. It means being treated as a second-class citizen, being diminished in the eyes of others. We have all felt this way at one time or another, but some feel it more consistently. Unfortunately, our schools often do not embrace the talents of many of their occupants.

'Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.

Sometimes a book is better than it ever had a right to be because of the history the reader brings to the reading and because of the methods educators use to bring a particular story alive.

My years as a therapist working with abuse and neglect families taught me at least one important lesson for my own life. Never judge until you can see through the eyes of that person you are judging, and then... never judge.

If you're writing about angry people, you use the language of anger. If you're writing about desperate people, you use the language of desperation.

It's hard to imagine my life not writing. I love it.

If I have any complaints about my youth... one is that many well-meaning adults lied to me. Not spiteful lies with malicious intent but lies designed to prevent emotional and psychological pain - lies told by the people who cared about me most: my parents, teachers, relatives.