Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

The idea of legitimacy is something I suppose I deal with in my fiction, and in part it's probably a response to my upbringing. When I was growing up I was the middle child, pathologically shy, in a family with a very loud and opinionated older brother, and I felt as if I never had the right to speak. As a result, I simply didn't speak very much.

I'm a physical learner. I learn from writing drafts, not reading them.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

But I've married a deeply sensible person who is extremely good at talking me down from my various ledges, and who takes care of me in a billion ways.

I think that writers have natural canvases, and my canvas, even in short stories, often seems to be the scope of a life.