Panic. You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW. But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you're breaithing through a drinking straw. Your mouth closes and your lips purse and all you can manage is a croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a flood of cold sweat spills, drenches your body. You want to scream. You would if you could. Cut you have to breathe to scream. Panic.

I have been a fan of comic books since childhood.

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

I will follow you to the ends of the world.

I entered the literary world, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I was a biology major in college, then went to medical school. I've never had any formal training in writing. So what I know about writing, I know from my own instincts, and whatever the narrative voice is in my own head.

In many parts of the world, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. But I think we need women to solve the problems that men create.

All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman.