When we are no longer capable of love, we are no longer alive.

I'm sure that growing up in the Midwest played a role in my chronic escapism. In fact, before I lived in France, I lived in Japan, England, and Bulgaria. I was determined to experience other places and cultures, particularly because I had the perception that I'd been cut off from these experiences as a child.

Finding one's voice - or creating a narrative voice that has the power to carry your story - is the hardest part.

If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, the dish is not going to work out.

I started listening to the Cure around the time I discovered Joy Division and, like Joy Division, they have shaped my taste in all sorts of dark and dreary ways.

But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies.

The most obvious difference between writing novels and memoirs is that my memoirs are true stories, and explore certain experiences I've lived, and thus operate within the boundaries of memory and fact.