I didn't expect to be up here. I'm quite humbled by this and the main reason I'm humbled is that there were four others who could easily be up here; that humbles me. We have so many good writers in this country.

One day, at my office, I wrote down some names and dates and notes, and I wrote a title, 'The Age of Despair,' and then some other 'Ages' - Innocence, God, Reason, Hope - and I wrote this as well: 'Woman, born in 1930, lives till the age of 80 or so, suffers depression, marries a car dealer, has children who grow up to confuse her.'

-Because they're free.
-They might look free, but they aren't. Believe me. You're free.
-How am I free?
-You're free to be modest. You're free to not smoke up. You're free to be here and listen and not respond to the nonsense that Hanna spouts. You're very calm, and you're very comfortable with yourself.

On the literal level, Ada is looking for her father. Charles's search is more psychological. Physically, he's looking for the village [where he killed a Vietnamese child point-blank]. By extension, if he finds the village, he thinks something will happen and he'll be absolved -- find completion. I suppose it's symbolic of what happened to him in Vietnam. Ada is still looking for what he was. . . . One can never find certainty but that won't stop her from trying. The quest beyond finding him physically is to discover where he comes from, where he's been, what happened to him and by extension what happened to her.

Invite characters of surprising and moral character, or at least those who grapple with what is right or those who make decisions that shock.

She left feeling dirty, and on the bus ride home she knew that what her uncles told her had come true: she had been attracted to an object that was beautiful, and she had become spellbound, and then its shape had changed, and what had appeared beautiful had turned ugly.