My mother believed in curses, karma, good luck, bad luck, feng shui. Her amorphous set of beliefs showed me you can pick and choose the qualities of your philosophy, based on what works for you.

For books I want to keep reading, it's definitely the voice. It must be a voice I've never heard before, and it must have its own particular intelligence. By 'voice,' I don't mean vernacular. It has to have its own particular history and world that it inhabits.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

I'm open to reading almost anything - fiction, nonfiction - as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created.