These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.

Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the lies of certain individuals close to me, with the detachment of time. I wanted to tell the truth about secrets: How much pain they give, yet how much relief, even happiness we may feel when at last the motive for secrecy has passed.

And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality.

From Mother you will inherit the belief that you can journey to your fate, there's a place to be located on a map that's destiny. If only you can get there. If it isn't too late. If no one stops you.