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?

As we change, the way in which we are perceived in terms of our relevance, our value, our beauty, and sexual potency changes.

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

But every age deserves its fashion and its forms, and no one can control what survives.

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

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 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.