I believe we’re defined by how much we consider the needs of those below us—our employees, our children, our obstacles. Selfishness is a matter of forethought. As a missionary in the best and worst parts of California, I spent a lot of time around people of widely different social classes. Most people treat food as a right, whether they’re talking about tilapia or a can of off-brand tuna—and the closer they get to the tilapia end of the spectrum, the more they feel they deserve it. When I do that, I’m ashamed; when I see other people do it, I’m furious.

I think what it was that helped me come up with this story was the idea that there is so much going on around us that we miss—not so much the size difference, as it is here—the ant we unknowingly crush, etc., although that’s part of it, but just the other cultures and signs and matrices of knowledge that, because we are unaware, they remain invisible to us. We live in a world of worlds, but we rarely see beyond where our own begins and ends.

I’m a big fan of leaving a little narrative wiggle room, and in this case, you can choose to believe whichever viewpoint you prefer. They’re all credible, after a fashion, and they all undermine one another just a tiny bit, which I enjoyed.

[What books were in the Library?] All of them. Every book ever written and dreamed. And they’re all the perfect version the author had in their head, the wild and gorgeous thing they fell in love with and so desperately hoped the book would grow up to be, transported directly to the page.

I had watched a documentary of the dismantling of the old Yankee stadium and the construction of the new. And I thought, how could they tear down this place full of so much history, the literal House that Ruth Built? It was such a sin. To me, the new stadium was (and is) an antiseptic and plastic version of the original. The documentary captured my feelings not just about Yankee stadium but the way we take so many things for granted, and how some are happy with cheap plastic substitutes. I felt I had to write about this.

I came to economics late in life, and I’m tremendously fond of it (especially in some of its more modern, biology-based forms). The ideas in even pretty basic economics are fascinating and often counter-intuitive and delightful. Also, since I sometimes forget how to write short stories and have to relearn the skills, it’s nice to have a familiar structure like a three-test fairy tale to work from.

Power tends to corrupt, said Lord Acton. There are always people who will get ahead by stomping their way up the ladder of life, and the devil take the hindmost. I suppose we could think about colonizing a planet and refusing to let any of the Bad Guys in, but even so, who’s going to do the choosing? Absolute power, Acton went on, tends to corrupt absolutely.