I didn't read about it for school. It was just for myself. I was interested in cults in general but Jonestown was the most interesting of all the cults I studied.

My fear was like a stray dog, roving the neighborhood of my life, looking for a new source of worry.

I'm felt I was writing about love and desire and community and belonging and grief and a whole host of other issues. But race is never far from the surface.

I was influenced growing up by everything from Harlequin romances to Fedor Dostoyevsky and Albert Camus, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and later Lydia Davis, Mary Gaitskill, bell hooks.

I definitely feel like when I write a book it's not my job to police or guide the readers. The book and the characters don't belong to me anymore. If that makes sense.

I'm increasingly less interested in classic storylines and that arc that we have come to expect.

Motherhood. It was hard to get lost in anything else completely when children were 3 years old.

I'm not trying to be coy, but I think everyone notices these things like skin color but some people are more aware that they are noticing them than others, maybe. If that makes sense.

I guess the subject of race is so natural to me I never think of it as hefty. It's something I talk about and joke about and discuss with my loved ones every day of my life.

I don't like stories that are too neat and too resolved. I think resolutions can be deadening for the reader.

I think cults never stop being interesting and I'm intrigued by how we all do a tiny bit of submitting to a larger group - and how they can sneak up on you.

Amo stare da sola : io, i miei libri e i miei pennelli, lontana dal resto della gente che trovo sempre inutile.

The acquisition of knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

But this is a thing that I know--to live with fear is not to live at all. A man will die every moment he is afraid.

If you understand what makes him tick-what is magic for him- then you can understand anyone

Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries

I always expect there to be a new counter-culture coming up, something that would make punk look as ridiculous as punk made the hippies look.

Respect is intended to operate on a two-way street.

Wearing a hat implies that you are bald if you are a man and that your hair is dirty if you are a woman.

Eccentricity, to be socially acceptable, had still to have at least four or five generations of inbreeding behind it.