Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.

Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.

Literature is always something - it is either story or poetry, ideally both. That is, you always know what it is and even if the interpretation is not available, the experience of language is.

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

I don't know the numbers, but roughly half of the people who came through Ellis Island returned home. They came here to make money, not to make history.

I like the idea of a book being a democratic space which readers enter, carrying their own thoughts, and participate in a conversation, or experience of grace.

I'll take any life in which I can make choices and have agency, and America is not a bad place for all that.