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!

Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

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

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

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

I don't like stories where I'm being given pages and pages of detail.