I'm not excusing the illegal act. I am here illegally. I'm here illegally, without authorization. That's a fact. That's nothing you can call the Orwellian cops about. But I am a human being, so therefore I am not illegal. That's also a fact.

The only reason I became a writer was so I could exist on a piece of paper.

I grew up in newsrooms. I've been in newsrooms since I was 17 years old. Journalism has been like my church; it's been like my identity.

A friend said to me I'm like a walking New Yorker article. It's true! That's how I write. That's how I think.

Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We're just waiting for our country to recognize it.

The immigration bill is going to pass. We're going to have a bill. It's going to get through the Senate. I think the fundamentals are there and the foundation is strong and the bill is going to happen. The House is going to be trickier, but I think it's going to happen there too.

There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. The more specific you get, the more universal it can be.