I tell myself it's a virtue, my failure to sleep in my own house, or at all. I tell myself that I spend more hours than most people aware that I am alive, and that over a lifetime this adds up to more living, more aliveness. I am more alive than the rest of my family. Which is my greatest night fear. Which is why I hunt. I don't ever want to be more alive than they are.

I really did for a few weeks think, I'm in pain because the world needs me to save it. Which is so ridiculous and egotistical.

We're not saints, any of us. Maybe somebody is, but I don't know those people. But we all know people who behave very smugly and are very egotistical and put you down as a manner of improving their own place in the world or improving their own place in the world.

I have a daughter who, when younger, possessed no barrier between her emotional self and the outside world. Her emotional insides spilled out all over, and, especially when I was sleep-deprived and probably a little paranoid, this really threatened me. It was as if she were embodying and expressing the insecurities and freaked-outedness I never express, and which I've learned over the years to keep hidden.

I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn’t be so hard, right?

It's fascinating to imagine two successful writers in one house. But when you think about it, it isn't very unusual. In fact, so many writers have writer spouses.

I always think it's useful to get an outside opinion.