There is your car and the open road, the fabled lure of random adventure. You stand at the verge, and you could become anything.

Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.

I think at a certain point the book develops a certain weight, or pressure. You've been pushing the rock up the hill for a long time and then it starts to roll and things do start to come together in the last two thirds.

I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.

I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.

I think we're always in some ways writing to the teachers who gave us early love.

I think that the way that I write stories is by instinct. You have some basic ideas - a character, or an image, or a situation that sounds compelling - and then you just feel your way around until you find the edges of your story. It's like going into a dark room... you stumble around until you find the walls and then inch your way to the light switch.