I try to be even-handed and fair-minded about my view of history. I don't romanticize one side and demonize the other, though I do think that if you're suffering a lot, especially in the Bob Marley sense, suffering becomes a kind of university out of which you'll learn some hard lessons.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I usually feel something before I know it.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

My grandfather is Portuguese. He betrayed what was expected of him and married my grandmother of African descent on my father's side.

I love the fact that I can go to a museum now that tells me I'm in the postmodern age.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.