After a while, the fear became a habit, too.

I'd like to think of my self as not melancholic at all, I think I'm a pretty cheerful person, really.

The writer's job, after all, is not to dictate meaning, but to give the reader enough pieces to create his or her own satisfying meaning. The story is truly finished—and meaning is made—not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters the story and fills that little ambiguous space, completing the circuit, letting the power flow through.

I am in a mixed race marriage myself, and I have a mixed race son....The racial perception interest is probably always going to be there to some extent.

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

I think this is something that is naturally built in in people, a need for attention and a need to be special and we are always trying to find a balance.

What made something precious? Losing it and finding it.