Time & Perspective Quote by Caroline B. Cooney

It is a disarmingly practical answer that sidesteps the fan-service trap built into the question. Readers ask for a “favorite book” the way they ask for a “favorite child”: they’re fishing for a neat ranking, a stable identity, a definitive canon. Caroline B. Cooney refuses the premise. Her loyalty isn’t to a finished product that can be displayed and adored; it’s to the messy, unfinished thing that still needs her.

The intent is partly protective. For a working writer, declaring a favorite can calcify the relationship to the work, turning craft into nostalgia. By naming the current project, Cooney signals that writing isn’t a trophy case, it’s a practice. The subtext: attention is finite, and the only book you can truly “love” is the one you’re currently solving. That’s not fickleness; it’s a professional ethic. You don’t build a career by rereading your best moments.

There’s also a quiet sales pitch, but the good kind: it frames authorship as ongoing, alive, and forward-facing. Cooney, long associated with page-turning YA fiction, has spent decades writing in a marketplace that rewards output yet punishes repetition. “Always” is doing sly work here; it suggests a renewable kind of passion, a way to stay energized over a lifetime of deadlines, drafts, and revisions.

Most revealing is the emotional truth embedded in the pragmatism: the book in progress is the only one that can still surprise you. Everything else is already fixed.