“Characters come to you . . . It’s very strange how it happens. They’re like ghosts, in the beginning. But ghosts who haven’t lived, or even been born yet. Which means you have to work backward in the process, looking for clues about them, about who they might have been, from the way in which they haunt you. And because of this—this listening—and trying to pay attention, always going backward and backward, you never really get away from them, and they never leave you.”
— The Floodmakers