I never have the feeling that I actually know what I'm doing or anything that I'm writing is any good.

I'll tell you what I was most surprised to discover about my writing process, and that is that I never know what I'm doing.

We're naturally afraid of a spider - these are memories that are being chemically passed down through your DNA.

I think [it's necessary to accept] things that are just true about yourself: These are my faults, these are the things I'm good at, this is where I came from, this is where I didn't come from. I think happy people are the ones who have made peace with those truths and acknowledged them, and learned to use them and live with them.

I'm a history person, and I love the groundedness of that, of being able to go, "Yes! People acted like that."

I think there's a lot that we remember almost chemically, through our DNA.

It occurred to me at some point that what really links us to the past is memory, and there's so much we've forgotten.