I may not have a practical mind, but it's very fixated on concrete things. I like detail.

The best translators slip into the glove of a text and then turn it inside out into another language, and the whole thing comes out looking like a brand-new glove again. I'm completely in awe of this skill, since I happen to be both bilingual and a writer, but nevertheless a lousy translator.

One does, after all, take on many of the givens of a society when one takes on its language.

I love food and I love everything involved with food. I love the fun of it. I love restaurants. I love cooking, although I don't cook very much. I love kitchens.

I'm an efficient, good, professional reporter. But I also write. And so what I try to do is write about places that I know that I care about intensely and write about them in a way that conveys the fact that I care.

I may not have a practical mind, but it's very fixated on concrete things. I like detail.

The most that somebody in Mexico City will get paid for a job in construction is 100 pesos a day.