Before that I was a scientist. I did research in population biology. And that's what I always go back to, it helps me to remember that people are not the end of the world, although we may be when it comes to it. We're just one species among millions in this world.

Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.

She is inhumanly alone. And then, all at once, she isn't.

you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.