So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can't sing.

My writing has always been met with derision or dismissal.

When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.

I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.

when people say you're charming you are in deep trouble.

Often the lines that define the traditional European arrangement of fiction, non-fiction, history, etc. are not useful. These lines can distort the world we, people who look like me, live in - and by the world, I mean our personal experience of it.