It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be.

The knowledge of death seemed present in both sisters-it was something about the way they carried themselves, something that had broken too son and had not mended, marking them in spite of their lightheartedness.

If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not best-selling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship