Jay Asher

When somebody's face-to-face with you saying, 'I may not have been here had I not read your book,' how do you respond to that? The first several times I traveled, it was almost too much. I was totally grateful, but emotionally, it was really hard.

I thought I was going to be known for my humor. But then I had an idea for a story, which was absolutely not humorous. But, of course, that's the one that sells and becomes big.

As an author, I love to know my book sells really well.

What you hear mostly people gripe about adaptations is, 'They took out this scene,' or, 'They had to condense these characters.' I understand why they have to do that. But if you had a favorite character, and now they've been melded together with another one, it's disappointing.

I think there's always room for humor, especially when you're talking about really serious issues.

Bullying has been around forever, and so it became one of these issues that as an adult we look back on and say, 'Yeah, it's just one of those unfortunate parts of growing up.' You know you're not going to stop it, so it just became easier to call it one of those things that 'just happens.'

When I decided I wanted to become an author, I never thought something I wrote would be used as a way to start conversations that are otherwise difficult to begin.

When you're being bullied, it can feel like no one cares, and I'm so excited to tell the teens at the schools I visit that I wouldn't be there if their school didn't care.

With traditional school visits, I also get to speak with people who haven't read my books and talk about my writing process as well as the serious aspects I write about.

My favorite aspect of being an author has always been visiting different communities and meeting my readers face to face.

There are things that aren't supposed to be comfortable to read, because those situations shouldn't be comfortable to discuss, but they still need to be discussed.

I was in Las Vegas, and there was a exhibit of King Tut's tomb, and it was an audio tour. At the very end of that, I just thought it would be a really cool structure for a novel, but I just didn't have a story to go along with it.

My friends and I did one of those 'Who's Hot and Who's Not' lists. Every school has those, and now they are online, which makes it even worse. It was one of those moments that I look back on a lot, and think that was horrible.

When me and my author friends who write about other difficult subject matter... when you hear from teens daily saying, 'Your book helped me or made me understand a friend better, what somebody else is going through,' you see the positive things.

There's this stress that is relieved when you realize somebody understands, and that's only going to happen if you feel the person who's writing the book or the people in the TV show aren't holding back.

One of the things I found is that no matter where in the country - poor communities, rich communities - everybody deals with very similar issues of bullying. It's pretty widespread.

If we know it's happening, and we're not having the discussion, we're contributing to the problem of making it seem like people can't open up.

'Fifty Shades' opened the door and made it easier to write about any issue that's controversial. It has helped other authors talk honestly.

It's funny: when I go to a school and speak, and when they hear the back story about me, they want to go read the book.

As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.