After Memory Keepers Daughter, it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

The Lake of Dreams grew gradually, over many years, elements and ideas accruing until they gained enough critical mass to become a novel.

The challenges in this place are real and sometimes very difficult, but I've learned to slow down and look for beauty in my days, for the mysteries and blessings woven into everything, into the very words we speak.

...and the distance between them, millimeters only, the space of a breath, opened up and deepened, became a cavern at whose edge he stood.

It wasn't right. He knew that, but it was like falling: once you started you couldn't stop until something stopped you.

...bleak territory of the heart.

He fished in his pocket for his keys and instead pulled out the last geode, gray and smooth, earth-shaped. He held it, warming in his palm, thinking of all mysteries the world contained: layers of stone, concealed beneath the flesh of earth and grass; these dull rocks, with their glimmering hidden hearts.