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.

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

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

In fact, not knowing is a necessary condition of writing for me. I don't know how else to reach something unexpected. I have to be as in the dark as my characters.

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

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?