God, life changes faster than you think.

I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.

She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what's comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes.

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.

I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.