I've also done things that put me in odd situations.

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

I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.

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.

I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.

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.

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