On that night after Phoebe had given her Pandora report, I thought about the Hope in Pandora's box. Maybe when everything seemed sad and miserable, Phoebe and I could both hope that something might start to go right.

Something I am wondering: if you cannot hear do you have no sounds in your head? Do you see a silent movie

I am drawn to the ways in which we are shaped by people and by place.

My granny Torrelli says when you are angry with someone, so angry you are thinking hateful things, so angry maybe you want to punch them, then you should think of the good things about them, and the nice things they've said, and why you liked them in the first place.

I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

One thing I'm interested in is what shapes us: the people? The place where we live? It's both of those and more. That's what I keep coming back to.

In many of my books, I explore the ways in which grandparents or other older persons are shaped by the young, and the young are shaped by the old, in an evolving dance.