At the end of the block where I used to live in Coconut Grove in Miami, there's a swampy area, a no-name alcove with a little mangrove estuary. It's beautiful.

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

My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida.

Could we betray our parents by going back to them?

A food truce, the picnic suspension of oedipal feeling that permits the generations to love each other at family reunions.

When I was younger I used to lock myself in the bathroom and read in the dry tub. I was also a fan of the 'shoe closet.' Reading felt thrilling and illicit and deeply private to me, and I felt vulnerable doing it in public.

So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum.