Every book changes my writing because I'm always trying to do something I didn't do before. I try to do what's hard for me, what I haven't done in the past.

When you're in that state of grief, any little breeze, any hello, any confrontation, any grazing of someone meeting your eyes, might cause you suddenly to burst into grief. You could be looking at a jar of peanut butter in the supermarket, and then start crying.

I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?

I was interested in cross-pollinating the two. I thought there was something lovely in the little vignette forms. I wanted to explore that.

Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining what I can't see.

When we started publishing, you had to be better than good. You had to be excellent. But as long as people are reading, I don't care what they're reading.

If educators were really understanding of that, they'd say, "You know what? Forget about bilingual, we're going to do multilingual education." So children are ready for the new millennium. We're way behind compared to countries in Europe. If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.