If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

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.

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

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