When I Write A Novel,

I've Always Had A Certain Facility With Words.

It's What The Taliban Does In Afghanistan, It's What Gets Done In The Middle East, And It's Clearly Something That Certain Mainly Conservative Groups In The United States Would Like To Do. They Miss The Good Old Days, When Men Were Men And Women Were Nothing.

These Are My Words; This Is Their World, A World In Which We Can Wear Our Gender On Our Sleeves, Unabashedly, As We Go About The Business Of Thinking Out Loud.

I Think The Gift Of My Mother's Death, If Anything So Terrible Can Be Said To Have An Upside To It, Is That I Was Always Keenly Aware That Life Was Fleeting, And That You'd Better Live While You Have The Chance. As I Say In The Book, Since I Was 19 Years Old I Felt Like I Was Living For Two, And When I Out-lived My Mother, When I Got Into My Forties, It Felt Like A Miracle To Me.

A Writer Is Always Working With Whatever She's Managed To Store In The Brainpan Or Puzzle Out About The World.