Do not discount the psychic warmth of the hive.

A tale, like the universe, they tell us, expands ceaselessly each time you examine it, until there’s finally no telling exactly where it begins, or ends, or where it places you now.

I wanted to present a sweep and scope of larger events, and a grander backdrop, but most important was to set against that a very singular, real and modest people struggling with every day and human struggles.

When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.

I had a visceral connection to the period [of Korean War]. By visceral I suppose I mean emotional. But every fiction requires so much that is not that so I did a lot of other research and a lot of thinking, a lot of struggling there.

I don't think that stuff is gone - I just don't want to dwell on it. There's a difference. As I said, I think we all have tendencies as writers, and I think we all have experience that we bring as readers to each project.

Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it.