Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position.

I thought how we might have to yell to be heard by Higher Power, but that's not saying it's not there. And that is faith for you. It's belief even when the gods don't deliver.

I make very involved drawings, even little structures, and try using design to figure out the rhythm of a plot. If there are several narrators then a clue has to pop up in the first line. There have to be certain grammatical clues, or distinctive names.

I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice.

Love. The black hook. The spear singing through the mind.

The Internet, which seems now so embedded and personal and crucial to our lives, isn't at all - we really shouldn't think of it that way.

I am at the bookstore a lot, but let my friends, the professional Birchbark Books staff, handle the day in and day out.