In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices.

I myself have always found that if I examine something, it's less scary. I grew up in the West, and we always had this theory that if you saw - if you kept the snake in your eye line, the snake wasn't going to bite you. And that's kind of the way I feel about confronting pain. I want to know where it is.

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.

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

I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost.