My books are always about someone obtaining a power to replace the previous sort of power that they held.

My books are always about someone obtaining a power to replace the previous sort of power that they held.

A writer's job is to cultivate what can go wrong. You're always looking for that dramatic arc of where things can fail.

We kind of deny the stages of life.

I am nothing, and not even that.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

I'm giving you my life to prove to myself I can, I really can love somebody. Even when I'm not getting paid, I can give love and happiness and charm. You see, I can handle the baby food and the not talking and being homeless and invisible, but I have to know that I can love somebody. Completely and totally, permanently and without hope of reward, just as an act of will, I will love somebody.