The time has to be right and the heart willing.

During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness", "joy", or "regret". Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that is oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions.

It was something every child knew how to do, maintain a direct and full connection with the world. Somehow you forgot about it as you grew up, and had to learn it again.

She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.