Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships. We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us. Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.

It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.

Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.

For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don't try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.

Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?