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.

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.

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.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

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

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

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.