That’s the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small community like this, even the people you hate you have as friends.

That’s the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small community like this, even the people you hate you have as friends.

I feel at times that I'm making up these little people and I've lost my mind.

Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission.

I feel like a lot of time my writing is like having about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. But no tree. You're going, Where do I put this? Then they go, Okay, you can have a tree, but we'll blindfold you and you gotta cut it down with a spoon.

The writing process is sort of like when you've got no electricity and you've gotten up in the middle of the night to find the bathroom, feeling your way along in the dark. I can't hardly tell you what I do because I really don't know.

If I can be writing, I can take a certain amount of control when so much around me is upsetting.