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

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

We are like flowers always reaching up towards some shred of light. I find this wondrous, nearly magical, certainly brave.

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

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?

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

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