I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer.

The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer.

Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it.

What sustains me is to be with my family and to write.

To persevere is always a reflection of the state of one's inner life, one's philosophy and one's perspective

I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.

To deny that there was this dark side of life would be like pretending that the cold of winter was somehow only a temporary illusion, a way station on the way to the higher "reality" of long, warm, pleasant summers. But summer, it turned out, was no more real than the snow that melted in wintertime.