I think I'm good at metaphors and descriptions. Plot doesn't come naturally to me, so I work really hard at it.
Honestly, if anyone reads my work, they're doing me a favor, so they get to use whatever words they want to describe it. I can't control that, nor if they like the work, so best not to even try.
I have an interest in the outsider.
I think, in the United States, we talk about race as a black and white issue... We're generally talking about it as if it's a binary equation whereas, in fact, there's more than two races and, in fact, those races blend together. There are a lot of different ways that people identify.
In fiction you're not often writing about the typical; you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour... another part comes from my personality: I'm an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.
As soon as I could write, I was writing stories.
What I remember about race relations in the 1990s is that you showed your awareness by saying you didn't see race, that you were colour-blind.
Rebecca Solnit is a clarion voice of reason.
Taste is idiosyncratic, so I don't love everything people recommend me, and I don't love everything my friends love.
I have a bad habit of reading more than one book simultaneously!
One of the most fun things for me, as a writer, is when readers ask questions like, 'Oh, I noticed that you have a lot of water and baptism imagery in your book. Did you do that on purpose?'
In my own work, when I start off writing a scene, I don't know which physical details are going to turn out to be meaningful. But, inevitably, certain images will stand out - you start to decide which ones are important as you go.
One of the things I like so much about 'Goodnight Moon' is the way it leaves room for ambiguity.
For the first three years of his life, my son insisted on hearing 'Goodnight Moon' before bedtime. Like most babies, he was not a good sleeper by disposition - but reading seemed to help, and this book specifically became part of his whole wind-down ritual.
I wanted to write a book about people who have the best intentions and think - really, truly think - that they're doing the right thing. And then they realize that when those ideals come knocking at their windowsill, a lot of times they will suddenly disavow those ideals.
I'm really interested in how we understand each other - and whether we can understand each other.
No reader wants to sit through the same scene four times in a row, unless they're radically different.
What you look for as a reader is somebody who is going to take you and say, 'C'mon. Come into the story. I'm going to show you what there is to see.' The guide who is going to tell you, 'Pay attention over there,' or, 'Do you remember that other thing? Now watch!'
I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.
I'm very much a people pleaser, and the first book had such a devoted and loving following.
