The idea of equality is misunderstood. I wouldn't ever argue that everyone is the same, but that differences should not be hierarchical. Attitudes and expectations have been imposed on both men and women. For instance, men had very little to do with the raising of their children before the women's movement. The women's movement has freed men to become more active as fathers. We're living in a period of transition, but change can be much slower than we want, with unintended consequences, and can also be happening without our seeing it.

I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.

Writers don't want to appear to be stupid. I don't know - maybe people become writers so that they can prove that they're not. Of course getting a book published doesn't mean that they're not stupid. At a certain point you have to stop trying to prove something and write because you need to think about something and want to communicate, in a very broad sense.

Wanting to know all kinds of things is perfect for novelists, because novelists are generalists. We're not specialists in anything, except, hopefully, writing.

I don't know what a natural thought process is.

You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic. I'm not a realist in that way.

Whether they're ghosts of great writers or people I loved - some died because of AIDS, others under mysterious circumstances - I don't want to forget these people, ever. That's very much a part of my still being alive - to remember those who aren't here anymore.