I Use My Fiction To Explore My

...you Know The Mistrust Of Heights Is The Mistrust Of Self, You Don't Know Whether You're Going To Jump.

I Usually Start With Something That Has Some Energy, Like A Compressed Character Or A Situation That's Wound Up Like A Spring. Then All I Have To Do Is Let It Go, Let Its Energy Carry The Story. And That May Not Turn Out To Be The Beginning Of The Book.

Aquamarines Grew With Emeralds, Claire Told Me. But Emeralds Were Fragile And Always Broke Into Smaller Pieces, While Aquamarines Were Stronger, Grew In Huge Crystals Without Any Trouble, So They Weren't Worth As Much. It Was The Emerald That Didn't Break That Was The Really Valuable Thing.

Beauty Was Deceptive. I Would Rather Wear My Pain, My Ugliness. I Was Torn And Stitched. I Was A Strip Mine, And They Would Just Have To Look. I Hoped I Made Them Sick. I Hoped They Saw Me In Their Dreams.

And I Realized As I Walked Through The Neighborhood How Each House Could Contain A Completely Different Reality. In A Single Block, There Could Be Fifty Seperate Worlds. Nobody Ever Really Knew What Was Going On Just Next Door.