Books light the fire-whether it's a book that's already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.

The minute you had kids you closed ranks. You didn't plan this in advance, but it happened. Families were like individual, discrete, moated island nations. The little group of citizens on the slab of rock gathered together instinctively, almost defensively, and everyone who was outside the walls—even if you'd once been best friends—was now just that, outsiders.

But it had no doubt sprung from true emotion, for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.

We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one.

People could not get enough of what they had lost, even if they no longer wanted it.

But now the world, he thought, had taken them. He knew that this could suddenly happen. One day you just woke up, and there was somewhere that you needed to be.

For me, a novel relying too heavily on a single idea might be a dry, deadly thing unless it possesses an animating force.