When I finished graduate school, the first George Bush was president, and I really wanted to get out of the country. We'd just gone through the first Gulf War.

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.

Every fictional thing I wrote gave me strength to write another and another. By the end I wasn't remaining true to anything but the story I wanted to tell.

I love reading fiction about people who are connecting intellectually. I find that exhilarating.

Anthropologists are great at novelistic observations. I would be thrilled if this novel would encourage anthropologists to write what they see in fictional form.

I love this idea of trying to create that intellectual eroticism. That was what I was working toward all along.