“After college, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, and went snowboarding every day. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do. So I applied to grad school for writing, and I just gave it a shot and took it from there.”

“Disney's Aulani Resort has really developed the southwest coast of Oahu and led to it getting more attention.”

“For my 11th birthday, I asked to be adopted.”

“Hawaii is so complex; there are so many points of view, and there are so many experiences to see and to find.”

“I always felt a little bit of an outsider, especially because I grew up on Oahu.”

“I can't speak for all Hawaiians, but the reality is that we depend on tourism. Locals might not want to go to the spots like Waikiki, but we do want tourists to experience more of the islands.”

“I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.”

“I like to add props to render the specificities of place - paintings, food, clothing, signs, infrastructure, music, sayings and slang particular to the region and particular to the character. And props shouldn't just sit there; they should get used.”

“I like to work out every day, so that takes up some time.”

“I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable.”

“I loved 'Belzhar' by Meg Wolitzer.”

“I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.”

“I'm proud of being from Hawaii, and I'm proud of being Hawaiian, but I'm more than that, too.”

“It's useless to criticize things that people love and something that speaks to them.”

“Jonathan Franzen seems like the grumpiest guy, and he doesn't seem to like much of anything, so I really don't care what he has to say.”

“My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian.”

“People go surfing before work and paddling afterward. My husband is from Wisconsin, and he goes to work in his Hawaiian shirt.”

“Setting shouldn't just consist of describing nature or a landscape, or of saying where something takes place. It is the world of specific people. It's not enough for it to feel vivid or credible; it should feel necessary.”

“The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.”

“The best thing about being a fiction writer is that where the truth is inconvenient, I could veer away.”

“The entire island knows our father, Fred Hemmings, Jr. - kids, adults, surfers, the governor, grocery clerks, gang members who call our house at night and threaten to kill us as soon as they get out of jail. Fred was a world-champion surfer and is now a well-known, controversial politician.”

“Tragedy brings change, and that's what I'm interested in most - how people plunge into change and try to fight, then eventually move with it with grace.”

“Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M.”

“When you're a child, you crave formal recognition; you crave ceremony, celebration, certification of proof.”

“With families, no matter what kind you inherit, at some point you want to announce that you belong to it.”

“Writing has never been like therapy for me, but blogging comes a little closer - I can smack-talk freely and frequently, and this is good for me.”