I Can't Imagine Being Invested In Someone

I Knew The Beginning And The End – I Just Had To Dream Up A Convincing Middle.

Life Is Just This Way, Broken, And I Am Crazy To Hope For Something Else.

The Idea That You Might End Up In A Job That Doesn't Allow You To Be Who You Are, Over The Course Of A Lifetime, Is Still One Of The Most Chilling Nightmares To Me. It's A Good Metaphor For Fears I Have About Losing My Soul In Some Accidental, Mundane Way. So, To Me, These Jobs That My Characters Have Are Very Loaded. They Immediately Suggest A Complex Character To Me, A Woman Who Is, Say, A Secretary, But Also A Vigilante On Behalf Of Her Own Soul.

I Think Because I Write So Many Short Stories, It's Not That Hard To Come Up With Characters That Are Not Me.

It Was A Real Whale, A Photograph Of A Real Whale. I Looked Into Its Tiny Wise Eye And Wondered Where That Eye Was Now. Was It Alive And Swimming, Or Had It Died Long Ago, Or Was It Dying Now, Right This Second? When A Whale Dies, It Falls Down Through The Ocean Slowly, Over The Course Of A Day. All The Other Fish See It Fall, Like A Giant Statue, Like A Building, But Slowly, Slowly.