Why did people try to shush trouble away as if it were an unruly child?.

I'm interested in endurance. People persist in the face of the most excruciating hardships..

But every age deserves its fashion and its forms, and no one can control what survives..

The language of the novel differs from the just-the-facts language of the old tales. It's robust and earthy, sometimes even baroque..

We are like flowers always reaching up towards some shred of light. I find this wondrous, nearly magical, certainly brave..

We grow, we mature, some of us give birth, we age, we die..

I guess I'm drawn to stories of people whose physicality puts them on the outside of things in order to explore the ways in which an identity is form….

Things, very strange things, happen in folktales and there is never much attention given to the whys and wherefores..

Because answers are inert things that stop inquiry. They make you think you have finished looking. But you are never finished. There are always disco….

In fact, not knowing is a necessary condition of writing for me. I don't know how else to reach something unexpected. I have to be as in the dark as ….

The story has to flow from an unstructured, felt place, but then I have to bring my analytical brain to bear on issues of craft..

As we change, the way in which we are perceived in terms of our relevance, our value, our beauty, and sexual potency changes..

I never know where I'm headed when I'm working on a book..

Writing, for me, is always a dance between the critical part of my brain and the subconscious..