I sort of don't believe in closure. In the sense that it doesn't make me feel better to think that something is over.

I feel like I don't understand time in novels, really. I bumble forward, is all.

You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people.

When I first met my husband, he was sculpting Vilnius out of clay - a sort of Vilnius, anyhow: a map of an imaginary European city based on the Lithuanian capital - to illustrate his second novel.

The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar.

I am not a therapy person, but I understand what therapy does. It's a way of translating dark thoughts into something manageable.