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

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.

To have a young person speak back, to hand him the microphone for his first-person utterances, you'd have to have an imagined architecture, otherwise people would say you're putting words in their mouths.

If you created a place in air where they're breathing and running around in, and then they speak in that fictional milieu, it's perfectly authenticated because the whole world relies on you, who've made it possible.

I think poetry can lead to policy, and I can hear the laughter when I say that.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.