I've always seen the world through the eyes of a scientist. I love the predictable outcomes that science gives us, the control over the world that that can render.

High fashion has the shelf life of potato salad. And when past its prime, it is similarly deadly.

We're surrounded by mandates, and I believe that literature should be mandate-free. I feel very strongly about that.

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.

But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again.

Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.

Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.