My husband is always accusing me of being a context-free individual. He asks something and he has no idea where it came from or what it related to. I have to supply him with way more supplementary information than I ever have to supply my female friends.

Maybe the body is taking responsibility where the mind is not. It's scrapbooking for us.

A white girl disappears from a white prep school in a white suburb. Nobody knows what happened to her. The overall whiteness of the world is threatened. This must be resolved by whatever means possible.

You should never read online comments if you want to keep thoughts above the belt.

As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging.

A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be.

People don't hijack planes anymore because that old system of hijacking in order to barter for a prison release or get to a different country no longer works, exactly, because 9/11 recoded the hostage's interpretation of a hijack. If a hijacker isn't trying to use the plane as a missile, then he is in danger of being killed by the hostages. There is no minor terror threat anymore. No mid-level terrorism.