By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.

I think because of these big issues of life and death that maybe sex feels like a crass question. But for Christ sake, this is a book that is so interested in an elemental human condition. And one of the ideas about surrender is an erotic surrender, too. These folks are surrendered by destiny; they surrender to each other in certain moments, but there is a lot of erotic surrender.

By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.