Because answers are inert things that stop inquiry. They make you think you have finished looking. But you are never finished. There are always discoveries that will turn everything you think you know on its head and that will make you ask all over again: Who are we?

We grow, we mature, some of us give birth, we age, we die.

The language of the novel differs from the just-the-facts language of the old tales. It's robust and earthy, sometimes even baroque.

I never know where I'm headed when I'm working on a book.

Things, very strange things, happen in folktales and there is never much attention given to the whys and wherefores.

I'm interested in endurance. People persist in the face of the most excruciating hardships.

I guess I'm drawn to stories of people whose physicality puts them on the outside of things in order to explore the ways in which an identity is formed around these prevailing attitudes.