Meaning can be usually be approximated, but often by sacrificing style. When I review my translations into Spanish, that's what I'm most concerned with, reading the sentences aloud in Spanish to make sure they sound the way I want them to. To be honest, I much prefer being translated into Greek or Japanese; in those cases, you have no way of being involved, and no pressure.

Ask any human being alive if they're the same person they were seven years ago and they're going to tell you they aren't.

What I'm most interested in is not necessarily the wound, but the scar. Not how someone is wounded, but what the scar does later.

I write 1,000 words a day first thing in the morning but I cannot write 240 characters to describe a piece that I spent six weeks working on with a producer.

Writing an op-ed feels like I'm taking the SAT. It's so hard. It feels like homework. And if it feels like homework, it just doesn't get done.

I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. Im thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.

I guess in my own life I don't really think much about manliness too much. I feel like a lot of men that I know don't sit around thinking, "How am I supposed to be a man?" I don't think that I have to prove anything.