A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.

It seems to me a worthy goal: try to create a representation of consciousness that's durable and truthful, i.e., that accounts, somewhat, for all the strange, tiny, hard-to-articulate, instantaneous, unwilled things that actually go on in our minds in the course of a given day, or even a given moment.

To me, the writer's main job is to just make the story unscroll in such a way that the reader is snared - she's right there, seeing things happen and caring about them. And if you dedicate yourself to this job, the meanings more or less take care of themselves. That's the theory, anyway.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

I still love my former wife, I won't call her my ex-wife.

I am definitely one of those girls who want to get married. I have two sisters and they are both married with kids, and I'm like, 'Oh, I want that.'

My fiction is reviewed by the mainstream press, by science fiction periodicals, romance magazines, small press publications and various other journals, including some usually devoted to archaeological and other science material.

Of course I believe in love despite four divorces. There is nobody who doesn't believe in love. But marriage - that fits some people but obviously not me.