If you want something you can have it, but you have to do some work. It's the ethic my mother brought me up with.

Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.

We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.

Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

For me, the magic of Hawaii comes from the stillness, the sea, the stars.

I have an advanced degree in procrastination and another one in paranoia.