Every character in a story, I thought when I had folded up the phone, has both a purpose and a secret purpose.

There’s nothing cruel about a vampire or a parasite, she said.

And you’re disappointed in the story. I know you wanted a love story.

I thought you could build a story that would function as a machine or else a complex of machines, each one moving separately, yet part of a process that ultimately would produce an emotion or...

The heroine might be unsure. And the reader. But I don’t think the author should be.

We all have strategies to distract ourselves from what we cannot bear. Memory, for example, serves such a function.

That’s why it’s difficult to write about your own life. Any distortion feels like a betrayal.