I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.

I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.

I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

From about the age of 15 or 16 I'd had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I'd done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it - I wouldn't call it "talent" - though I wondered if I'd ever have the guts to actually commit to it.

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.

You have the mainstream bourgeois life of the U.S., Europe, the "developed" world - the life of technology, education, mortgages, careers, a certain level of physical comfort - while on the other hand, several billion people on the planet exist on less than a dollar a day. That's a huge and terrible reality to get your head around.