We, as writers, have to figure out a way to create a consciousness in language. It's crazy even to attempt to do that.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

It is my belief that we as human beings have a need to tell stories - I think it's evolutionary. So you can think of the short story as a literary form, or you can instead think of stories.

I am just like everybody else...because there is nobody like me in the whole world.

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

What I don't like about America is not necessarily an American thing; it's a capitalist thing. This is the Vatican of capitalism.

I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where you're not, to think of it as sovereign because you're not there. I was always in the center of where I needed to be.