Why did people try to shush trouble away as if it were an unruly child?

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.

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?

The story has to flow from an unstructured, felt place, but then I have to bring my analytical brain to bear on issues of craft.

Writing, for me, is always a dance between the critical part of my brain and the subconscious.

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

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