I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

However, I think I managed to reach a new level with Koko, and I will always be grateful for the experience.

Fear and I were old buddies, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

I wish I could go back and re-write my first novel for the first time. Because I really didn't know what I was doing, and although it was published, it is, after all this time, kind of an embarrassment.

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.

Close your mouth and get out of the way, because here comes Kelly Link, than whom no one is better.

Ideally, I would create a book so interdependent and self-sustaining in its parts, so wondrously connected word by word and paragraph by paragraph, so charged with the joy of language, that it would actually float three or four inches above any table where you try to set it down.