One of the writers I most admire is Hilary Mantel because in the middle of her career, she just changed paths entirely and became just a totally different novelist.

One of the fun things about unreliable narrators is they can be funny. You can admire things about them and laugh with them.

Any frequent visitor to Hawaii is fixated on mapping how the islands have changed since their last visit.

One of the things I'm fascinated by as a traveler is watching how different countries control how they let the world encounter them.

Sometimes, of course, there's no quick way to make it through immigration: Different airports have gluts of incoming flights at different times of day, and short of rearranging your flight schedule to ensure you'll land at a low-traffic hour, there's nothing you can do.

Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.