I also have just my own limits about stuff. I'm not interested in writing graphically about sexual assault for example. I feel like the stuff that I'm fascinated by is the stuff that's part of the public imagination of what horror is. The bleakness is a different issue. I think that just stems from my personality. I wish that I offered a little more glimmer of hope sometimes.

The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.

I always worry that knowing too much about a novel or a story early on in writing will close it down - it feels fatalistic in some way.

I've never been able to sleep very much, even when I was a kid. I used to hate being forced to lay in bed in the darkness, and just shifting in bed and staring at the shadows.

The feeling of being an outsider, and the identity theme, are hardwired into me. If there's anything really autobiographical in my fiction, it's that feeling. I always feel that way.

I start with an image, then I go from the image toward exploring the situation. Then I write a scene, and from the scene I find the character, from the character I find the larger plot. It's like deductive reasoning - I start with the smaller stuff and work backward.

In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first falling in love with books.