The regional voice is the universal voice.

To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.

What madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She'd become, she believed, a stronger person: a willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.

You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

Vividly imagined, beautifully written, at times almost unbearably suspenseful-the stories in Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection, This Is Paradise, are boldly inventive in their exploration of the tenuous nature of human relations. These are poignant stories of 'paradise'-Hawai'i-with all that 'paradise' entails of the transience of sensuous beauty.

Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.

I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.