Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.

I have seven step-siblings from my mother's second and third marriages. My degree of closeness to my step-siblings varies among the seven but I have a great sense of loyalty to all of them, especially the four from my childhood. If those people needed my help I would be there for them.

I certainly have written a lot about police in my life, and it's not only something that I know about, but always something that interests me.

I tend to keep my ideas in my head. When I write something down in a notebook it's never centralized. There are too many notebooks floating around, but maybe that's a good thing.

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

The timing of the electrical failure seemed dramatic and perfectly correct, as if the lights had said, "You have no need for sight. Listen.

Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.