With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

Characters to me are like sonnets, they have limits that you obey which allow a force to enter in, an invention that makes the novel possible. Change the limits and the force leaves. The novel becomes impossible.

Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.