Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.

I am single and childless, but I have lots of friends and I am an aunt to three lovely children.

What was it like...to have someone who knew you would always return and who welcomed you with open arms?

I grew up in Florida, and I wanted to go home and I couldn't. I didn't have the money. The book [The Tiger Rising] was a way to go home.

We [me and Alison McGhee] probably wouldn't have said that when we were writing the stories, but it is so apparent to me in the finished product. For me, looking at Bink, it's like looking at myself on the page in a way that I've never experienced with any other book that I've written.

Besides, who ever asked you what you wanted in this world, girl? The answer to that question, reader, as you well know, was absolutely no one.

Love, as we have already discussed, is a powerful, wonderful, ridiculous thing, capable of moving mountains. And spools of thread.