Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I knew he was unreliable, but he was fun to be with. He was a child’s ideal companion, full of surprises and happy animal energy. He enjoyed food and drink. He liked to try new things. He brought home coconuts, papayas, mangoes, and urged them on our reluctant conservative selves. On Sundays he liked to discover new places, take us on endless bus or trolley rides to some new park or beach he knew about. He always counseled daring, in whatever situation, the courage to test the unknown, an instruction that was thematically in opposition to my mother’s.

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

The images of things are not the things in themselves.

Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?