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'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things.

You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies!

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.

Anthropology is separated from mass reading, and that is something that bothered Margaret Mead. She always said that she wrote everything for her grandmother, in a way that her grandmother could understand what she was saying.

I had one family that used a lot of yelling and screaming, and that was very normal. Another side of my family, nobody would raise their voice at all.

When I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes. Then when I put it on the computer, a different part of my brain kicks in and I really evaluate every single word and sentence and make decisions. I like that step of polishing while I'm rewriting the entire thing, not just cutting and pasting. Really putting in every word and making a decision: is this something I can stand by?