You pass the old L.A. County jail, which is surprisingly beautiful. It's got a handsome stone facade and stately columns. The new L.A. County jail - called The Twin Towers - isn't beautiful at all; it's a stucco panopticon the color of sick flesh.

Commonality doesn't inoculate against hurt.

Armchair poverty tourism has been around as long as authors have written about class. As an author, I have struggled myself with the nuances of writing about poverty without reducing any community to a catalog of its difficulties.

Learning the edges or limits or sources of friction in empathy was one of the big issues for me.

Empathy is cloaked in our actions - as in, we might be experiencing empathy but not realize it's empathy.

Whenever I've been stuck on a project, it's always brought me solace to the return to books that moved me in the past. It's a nice way to get outside my own head; and it brings me back to one of the most important reasons I write at all: to bring some pleasure to readers, to make them think or feel.

We think we should have to work in order to feel. We want to have our cake resist us; and then we want to eat it, too.