I go straight from thinking about my narrator to being him.

I like having a private name and a public name. It helps keep things straight.

'The Outsiders' died on the vine being sold as a drugstore paperback.

My goal from being a child was to have a happy home life.

I just felt being part of my peer group so strongly. I was immersed in teen culture, but not taken in by it.

The thing is, the Tulsa experience that I wrote about in 'The Outsiders' is closer to the universal experience than it would be if I wrote it from L.A. or New York. It's an everyman story.