After years of having immersed myself in science, I do think that if you master several different ways of thinking, it makes your own thought processes more agile.

Memory changes as a person matures.

Bedtime rituals for children ease the way to the elsewhere of slumber - teeth brushing and pajamas, the voice of a parent reading, the feel and smell of the old blanket or toy, the nightlight glowing in a corner.

Reading is perception as translation. The inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind.

I remember thinking how easy it is to speak in clichés, to steal a line from pulp fiction and let it fall. We can only hover around the inexpressible with our words anyway, and there is comfort in saying what we have heard before.

I think because mothers usually are the people who take care of us when we're little, and when we're little those mothers are omnipotent, perhaps men even more than women don't like to think about that dependency. That dependency is horror.

Writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.