I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.

The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.

But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go--so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they enjoy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.

When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I've always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables.

There's a difference between bravery and rash stupidity.

I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.

No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.