I'll tell you what I was most surprised to discover about my writing process, and that is that I never know what I'm doing.

It occurred to me at some point that what really links us to the past is memory, and there's so much we've forgotten.

I think [it's necessary to accept] things that are just true about yourself: These are my faults, these are the things I'm good at, this is where I came from, this is where I didn't come from. I think happy people are the ones who have made peace with those truths and acknowledged them, and learned to use them and live with them.

Your truth really can't be twisted. It is what it is. That doesn't mean that a person can't develop and change and reinterpret their life.

I think the past is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about, not only what is different about the past but what's the same, and what links us to the past.

I am very into genealogy and heritage, and that's how I started writing.

We're naturally afraid of a spider - these are memories that are being chemically passed down through your DNA.

I would not give up a lot of what I know about my heritage. I would not give up knowing where I came from, the good parts and the bad parts.

When I was thinking about all the things that the world had forgotten, it made me think about people who have actually really forgotten everything, and how much of our identity is wrapped up in those memories, and how much of our experience makes us who we are, and remembering those experiences makes us who we are.