Publishing my book is like giving it away. At first you start talking about it, but you are basically letting go. I won't say it's like giving birth because I haven't given birth. It's more like when your children leave home.

The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing; you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.

If you write, and you are really alone (writing is a lonely thing), you learn to be alone without suffering. When you read, you also learn to do this. When you write, you deal with things.

I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.

As a child, all you see is that adults are not playing. Adults are not talking too much. Adults don't want to relate to each other.

We rely too much on the people we share our lives with. We hold them responsible for things they are not even aware of. We start blaming them.

The stories on standardized tests don't have one author, therefore they can never authentically be in the first person. Imagine that! Everywhere, there are these tests that have been written by multiple people.