Chloe Benjamin

It's an unbelievable, absurd paradox that we have to put one step in front of the other every day without knowing which one will be our last. ”

I am somebody who has always struggled with uncertainty. And, of course, uncertainty is so core to life. I seek out knowledge to help me deal with that. But I'm also aware that knowledge can be really a double-edged sword. ”

I did invent the idea of using lucid dreaming to treat sleep disorders, but I was influenced by many real-life researchers - from forefathers like Freud and Jung to Stephen Laberge and Rosalind Cartwright, who explore lucid dreaming and parasomnias. ”

I think much of my own quest in life is to figure out how best to cope with my own uncertainties. ”

I've always been fascinated by dreams - they seem like such intriguing evidence of the brain's obsession with narrative as a form of sense-making. But because dreaming is an unconscious process, we have little control over the stories we tell, so they can be fraught with anxiety, vulnerability, and exposure. ”

I've always been interested in the tension between knowledge and mystery, between science and religion, and the various ways we cope with the unknown. Some of those are productive; some can be attempts to pin down things that are by nature impossible to know. ”

You can't have bad things happening to characters simply for shock value; you need to provide context. ”

My favorite writer is Alice Munro. It's simply amazing how well she captures entire lifetimes in a single short story. ”

I think readers either love or hate nonlinear storytelling, and it's true that it can be more difficult, both to write and to read. ”

My mom is Episcopalian; my dad is ancestrally Jewish but personally atheist. After their divorce, however, my dad married a Jewish spiritual director, and I became fascinated by the traditions she brought into our lives. ”