... As A Rule Of Thumb, Whenever

What Interests Me In Writing A Novel Is Taking Really Remote Voices, Characters, And Stories And Beginning To Create Some Kind Of Web.

Only Now That My Son Was Gone Did I Realize How Much I'd Been Living For Him. When I Woke Up In The Morning It Was Because He Existed, And When I Ordered Food It Was Because He Existed, And When I Wrote My Book It Was Because He Existed To Read It.

When I Got Older I Decided I Wanted To Be A Real Writer. I Tried To Write About Real Things. I Wanted To Describe The World, Because To Live In An Undescribed World Was Too Lonely.

To Hike Out Alone In The Desert; To Sleep On The Valley Floor On A Night With No Moon, In The Pitch Black, Just Listening To The Boom Of Silence: You Can't Imagine What That's Like.

Only Later Did I Come To Understand That To Be A Mother Is To Be An Illusion. No Matter How Vigilant, In The End A Mother Can't Protect Her Child - Not From Pain, Or Horror, Or The Nightmare Of Violence, From Sealed Trains Moving Rapidly In The Wrong Direction, The Depravity Of Strangers, Trapdoors, Abysses, Fires, Cars In The Rain, From Chance.