I think the mythology of death really ran away with me when I was very young.

My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone we're left with the concept, but not the true memory.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

I like dark subject matter. I'm not sure what that means about me!

A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person's life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.

In the mess of moving from place to place, I skipped two grades in the space of one year.