I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.

There are people who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not crawl, once

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly.

I have many problems in my life, but I don't think that identity is one of them.

I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.