When I was growing up I went to the
Orlando Public Library almost every
weekend with my family, and it was a huge
part of our lives, a huge part of how I
found out about books.
And it's still very important to me to go to
libraries. I discovered by love reading
in libraries.
The books were free. I couldn't get over it.
They would give you as many as you
wanted as long as you're trying them on time.
And so it was hugely important to me.
My high school library was really
important to me.  The school
librarian at the boarding school that I
attended, in addition to being a great
librarians was also a really
wonderful person and a mentor to me and
someone who took really good care of me. 
I take my son to the library alot. He's
two and he loves, loves, loves going to the
library. But I also go
to the library on my own quite a bit for
research particular when i was reading
my new book
I did a lot of research, medical
research, about the kinds of cancer that
the characters
in my novel had. Library budget cuts have been devastating
to the health and well-being of
communities,
and it makes me really sad. It's been
devastating to see book budgets get cut
so much.  It's also been
devastating to see staff budgets get cut
so much, because
one of the things that makes the
United States the United States
is the fact that all people in our
country
have access, free and open access, to all of
the world's information through public
libraries. And to see that stripped
away, really to see one of the core
facets, the cornerstones of 
idea of America stripped away.
Well it always disappoints me to see books censored
in libraries and schools.
It happens to my own books, it also
happens to some of the books that I love
the most.
I believe that
some people should not be able to make
decisions for all people about what
constitutes appropriate content.
And that
the responsibility of us as
individuals and as parents is to make
decisions about
ourselves and our children,  not about
other people and their children.
Well my new book, "The Fault in Their Stars," just came
out twelve days ago, so i'm still pretty
focused on that.
At some point I'm sure that I'll
write another book, but right now
I can't think about anything other than
this one.
