Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.

If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.

I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.

I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again. When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country. It doesn't matter how educated they are. By living in the world and living their experiences, they bring extraordinary truths. I try to do those truths justice.

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.