I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.

Kelly Link's prose is conveyed in details so startling and fine that you work up a sweat just waiting for the next sentence to land. This is why we read, crave, need, can't live without short stories.

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

What inspires me most to write is the act of traveling.

Wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind.

When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

When your fight has purpose - to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent - it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling - when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event - there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.