First, you hand over some basics-overwhelming joy, existential angst, a giving-in to desire, etc. And then you promise to withstand talking idly about the weather, to encourage cliché, to uphold the virtues of average. You hand over the need to be understood and, in return, you get a bar of Normal soap. And you can wash in it and be daily reborn to a safe world of modest, enduring love or, at least, mild, well-mannered bonding.

Basically if you burst into my office the walls themselves will flutter as if alive - maybe that's the reason for all the wings in 'Pure.

Different genres allow me to not feel so hemmed in by my own voice, tics, style.

Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that's how faith grows stronger.

I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?

Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.

It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.