You really, really have to care about animals to want to kill one. You have to learn all this stuff about them and start thinking like them.

I've definitely written people e-mails telling them I've loved their stories, but that seems more like a professional journalist thing to do.

What I wound up doing, which I think is really journalistically dubious, is changing the order of some of the things I did, so that the things I ended up struggling with the most wind up being two-thirds of the way in.

The people who get places in life just say yes to everything.

I've learned over time that every editor has told me when you're getting that much hate, you don't talk about it. You just kind of don't give it oxygen and let it go away. It's almost - not always, but almost - always the best policy.

There have been people who represent something very symbolic and I've been freaked out interviewing them.

I don't read the "letters" section of Time magazine. I think it's just my habit as a reader. I don't read comments on stories, in general.