I had been going out to Orient for several years.

I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.

There are certain moments where artwork might seem like it's part of someone's career - if you really know the art world - , but I did my best to prevent that overlap.

It's really hard to write about art in general. But it's exceptionally hard to fictionalize art and make work that isn't a parody, or is something that could withstand critique and exist in the art world as a valuable object, or a true piece.

I've never even done a residency.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.