I wanted to have very strong female characters. I just thought it was always the way the world should be.

I went to college to study drama where I discovered I had no talent and after a period of dropping out majored in cultural anthropology which of course meant more masks and dancing. I studied what interested me and so I had to become a writer because my education had left me unsuited for a decent well-paying job.

There is a love of wood, as of other things that do not answer to our touch.

I wanted to have very strong female characters. I just thought it was always the way the world should be.

Real myths are often strange and startlingly unfamiliar, and don't always give up their meanings easily; you have to tease them out, and for me, that's one of the pleasures of reading older collections of lore.

It sounds creepy, but I always liked the idea of disappearing then becoming something new. That of course was before I disappeared.

You build a character, a shell, and if you build it right, something comes to live inside it.