The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it?

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.

The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.

People - me included - want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.

Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.

A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.