I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.

Life scars us with its random motion, he thought. Only death is perfect.

Moon is also a naive native girl when she sets out for Carbuncle.

Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything...and not doing it only because you can.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Everything born has to die, in order to make room for the future.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.