Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.

A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.

The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?'

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

We hope that you will truly lock him up for the rest of his life and throw away the key.