It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

Sexy means loving someone you donot know.

Each day she removes a small portion of the unwanted things in people's lives, though all of it, she thinks, was previously wanted, once useful. She feels the sun scorching the back of her neck. The heat is at its worst now, the rains still a few months away. The task satisfies her. It passes the time.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.

The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold.