My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

I have to pay attention to what I have felt and observed, then push these responses to an extreme while keeping the story within the realm of being psychologically and emotionally true.

In case you haven't noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can't stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it's okay we did whatever we did.

Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.

It’s just that I’m the kind of person,' Rebecca continued, 'that thinks if you took a map of the whole world and put a pin in it for every person, there wouldn’t be a pin for me.

I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.