I grew up writing. It was very natural in my household. My father was a poet, and his mother had been a novelist back in Hungary. I don't think I really thought about it being my career until high school, which is still pretty early, but it was a while there of just assuming this was something everyone did all day long.

Writing a short story is like painting a picture on the head of a pin. And just getting everything to fit is - sometimes seems impossible. Writing a novel, though, is - has its own challenges of scope. And I think of that as painting a mural, where the challenge is that if you are close enough to work on it, you're too close to see the whole thing.

I did teach elementary school for quite a while, and so I didn't have to reach too far back for the titles and authors that populate the early chapters 'of The Borrower.'

There's a great social component to being a writer, to being an artist.

Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.

I was always given the comedy role, even in the ballet. I was the one who fell off her points, you know? I love doing comedy, and I love being in things that make people laugh.

Chuck Lorre and everyone else on 'Mom' did such a great job of balancing that line that rides tragedy and comedy. They make you cry, and then they make you crack up about it.

When I think about Plastic Man, he was genuinely the first funny super hero. I'm obviously attracted to that. There's also this great mixture of tragedy in there, too, that I love. The humor comes from a place of pain.