What Lingered After Them Was Not Life,

I Approach Writing Female Characters The Same Why I Approach Writing Male Characters. I Never Think I'm Writing About Women, I Think I'm Writing About One Woman, One Person. And I Try To Imagine What She Is Like, And Endow Her With A Lot Of My Own Thoughts And History.

We're All Made Up Of Many Parts, Other Halves. Not Just Me.

I Hadn't Gotten Old Enough Yet To Realize That Living Sends A Person Not Into The Future But Back Into The Past, To Childhood And Before Birth, Finally, To Commune With The Dead. You Get Older, You Puff On The Stairs, You Enter The Body Of Your Father. From There It's Only A Quick Jump To Your Grandparents, And Then Before You Know It You're Time Traveling. In This Life We Grow Backwards.

And In Some Of The Houses, People Were Getting Old And Sick And Were Dying, Leaving Others To Grieve. It Was Happening All The Time, Unnoticed, And It Was The Thing That Really Mattered. What Really Mattered In Life, What Gave It Weight, Was Death.

They Thought Depression Was Like Bieng 'depressed'. They Thought It Was Like Being In A Bad Mood, Only Worse. Therefore, They Tried To Get Him To Snap Out Of It.