For me - showing a half-finished manuscript is tricky. Just as a bird will get spooked and abandon her eggs if some outside party comes around and makes too much noise or pokes around the nest too intrusively - well, that's what it's like for me if I show work too early and I get a lot of editorial suggestions at the wrong time.

Who was it said that coincidence was just God’s way of remaining anonymous?

All those layers of silence upon silence.

But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence.

Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.

Children - if you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children - children lie all the time