There's an imperative to make sure you distinguish fiction from the fact, because if the fact is doing the work, why did you do fiction? And once you raise the question of why - why do fiction? - then you have to answer it in your text as a kind of enactment of the answer.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

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.

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.

When you walk to the end of a fiction, its procedure is 1) intuitive; and 2) emotional. Its intelligence is emotional, I think.

With kids, they force you to get out of bed. They force you to smile. They remind you of spontaneity.

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