There is secrecy and betrayal but that's more part and parcel of the kind of anguish that the people go through. And maybe that's modes of survival, rather than modes of consciousness.

I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past time sequences. They're less "written."

You can be affected by a person because of something particular they said or did but sometimes how a person was, a manner of being, that gets most deeply absorbed, and prompts you to revisit certain parts of your life with an enhanced perspective, flowing forward right up to now.

I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives. A lot of wonderful photographs were made available to me from that period - 1950-1956 - and those were given to me by a Korean newspaper in Seoul. Ruined villages, refugees streaming through a river valley, GI's and orphans and orphanages, those tiny details that you can only see in a picture.

For if there is ever a moment when we are most vulnerable, it’s when we’re closest to the idea of the attained desire, and thus farthest from ourselves, which is when we’ll tread through any flame.

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's not that I don't enjoy other people, but what I find with writers is this back and forth. And also, there's no need to talk about work.