Having a magical element in a realistic setting without explanation seems to me to be the hallmark of fairy tales, which present us with a kind of metaphorical look at some aspect of our lives.

I've always gone with Kafka's model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka's famous line from Metamorphosis, "Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect" (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further.

I'd say that most of life seems to me to be that way, a mixture of the mundane and the mythic, when you're living the life of the mind.

Having a magical element in a realistic setting without explanation seems to me to be the hallmark of fairy tales, which present us with a kind of metaphorical look at some aspect of our lives.

As I get older, I'm finding that I recognize certain celebrities only because they frequently grace the pages of US Weekly, but beyond that, I have no idea what they do.

I think there's a fine line between being so obtuse that you lose the reader completely, which is the intention for some writers, though it isn't mine. I work hard at grounding the world as much as possible in the world we do recognize.

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.