I often felt myself to be an outsider, which is great training for all writers.

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

You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu.

I think that's the real horror story for me, how little you can ever really know about your own motivations. How in the dark we all are about the concerns and the contents of our minds.

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

People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.

When I'm drafting, I suppose it's an intuitive process - figuring out when something just has a surreal glaze on it and when it grapples with something that could threaten a character's day-to-day reality.