I think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling stories about what's going on, which is something you can't do if you're totally caught up in the moment.

Obviously there are many, many ways of being an outsider, but having immigrant parents is one of them. For one thing, it makes you a translator: there are all kinds of things that American parents know about life in America ,and about being a kid in America, that non-American parents don't know, and in many cases it falls on the kid to tell them, and also to field questions from Americans about their parents' native country.

When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

I try really hard to cultivate the pure love of reading, to make time for it, because it would be really sad to still be a writer without remembering why, on some visceral, emotional level.

I think humor is a really important way of creating solidarity - like, through humor you can make people realize that certain situations, where they thought they were alone, are actually shared by everyone.

I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

Humor is really important to me. All my favorite writers are writers I consider to be funny, including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, even though that's not necessarily their rap.