America's great talent, I think, is to generate desires that would never have occurred, natively,... and to make those desires so painfully real that money becomes a fiction, an imaginary means to some concrete end.

I do think that I have a more flexible view of the interactions between people, and between human and non-human protagonists, humans and their landscapes.

Growing up, Catholic church really was such an incubator for my imagination, because all of those mysteries felt embedded in this insanely green, tropical landscape: the ocean nearby, the giant banyan trees. It all felt part of one seamless mystery to me.

The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.

I am extremely close to my brother, Kent, and my sister, Lauren, who have been remarkably understanding about all of my weird sibling tales.

Myth continues to be a valuable way to understand parts of our nature that we can't quantify.

What passes for news is just morbid speculation or cartoonish screaming, followed by diaper commercials.