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

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

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.

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.

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.

One must give himself completely to his art and not hold back. Throw caution to the wind. Embrace the muse. Make love to your art.

Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.

When the image is new, the world is new.

Emma, okay, enough with the singing. Mommy's getting a three-pill headache.

For those special moments you never want to forget. When it comes to you, all I need is a pencilEthan

A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.

Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

This relationship is going to be built on trust.

It can be really frightening for young people to see their parents fighting. Remember, you're not alone and there are people out there who can support you.

The mobile market is exploding and it makes perfect sense for a media company like ours to create a real content destination for the billions of cell-phone users around the world.