He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.

At the most difficult moments of my life, when it seemed that every door was closed to me, the taste of those apricots comes back to comfort me with the notion that abundance is always within reach, if only one knows how to find it.

I met a guy, very exotic to me - he was blonde with blue eyes - and I just had a fling that turned out to be love. I moved to San Francisco to spend a week with him and get him out of my system; I'm still here 26 years later.

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.

One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the USA, which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The US has a young population, and everything can change within a year.