I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.

I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe.

Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting aspect of it to me - how really tenuous our sanity is.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.

On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm doing ... I can't do it.

Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.