This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need.

I think to be in exile is a curse, and you need to turn it into a blessing. Youve been thrown into exile to die, really, to silence you so that your voice cannot come home. And so my whole life has been dedicated to saying, I will not be silenced.

We can live with lots of things, but we can't live without imagination, we can't live without hope.

Life may unfold chronologically for the body and for bureaucracies that keep track of such things as births, marriages, deaths, visas, tax returns, expulsions, and identity cards, but memory does not play this game in quite the same way, always manages to confound the desire for tidiness.

Those who have never suffered the iniquities of exile cannot possibly understand the significance, the gravitas, of a mattress.

We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.

Most writers who leave their country physically have already left it mentally and emotionally.