I've always been fascinated with marine geography and how deep things are. I was spellbound by the tsunami, for example, by the actual maps. There is just something about the unseen bottom of the sea that has always fascinated me, how deep is it.

I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored. She said, "Then write something. Then you can read it." In fact, I had just learned to read, so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write something - and then read it!

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

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

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.

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.

Writers are only rarely likable.