I have three stepfamilies as well as my family of origin. I've had to adjust to them and also go back and forth among them. I became an observer of human nature because when you are in those situations you have to be.

To go back to my childhood, I experienced lots of different family cultures, all the while feeling like none of them were mine.

I always had this put-together family, and I always identified as the outsider. And that's a position where I feel most comfortable, and yet I feel an incredible longing to belong. That is really a strong feeling from my childhood - a desire to be part of a group.

There are certain tribes in the middle Sepik that eat raw bat. A certain kind of raw bat is a delicacy.

I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things. My first three novels were all about families. Things that happen in a house within a family, because you're a child or because you want to keep the family together, you suffer things you might not have had to suffer if you weren't in that situation.

I definitely feel that my brain works differently, and words come out differently, if I have a pencil in my hand, rather than if I have a keyboard.

I had lived in France before graduate school, but because of Spain, I had a lot of the characters go and spend a good bit of time in Spain.