People should pay more attention. Everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.

If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable.

People should pay more attention. Everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.

I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud.

I think fiction can help us find everything. You know, I think that in fiction you can say things and in a way be truer than you can be in real life and truer than you can be in non-fiction. There's an accuracy to fiction that people don't really talk about - an emotional accuracy.

What draws me to family... if I were a psychiatrist, I'd say an enormous amount of unresolved personal material. If I were an anthropologist, I'd say families are at the root of social structures - they shape our identity, our belief systems - and so I find them fascinating. Also, I love the idea that families have narratives that are essentially the family story that is passed along generation to generation - and the rifts start when people question the story.