We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.

Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.

The body is what reminds us on a daily basis that we're human. The body defies us, it betrays us, we have to struggle with it, you know. And it reveals in curious and in abiding ways how we are not perfect.

A form wherein we can enjoy simultaneously what is best in both the novel and the short story form. My plan was to create a book that affords readers some of the novel's long-form pleasures but that also contains the short story's ability to capture what is so difficult about being human - the brevity of our moments, their cruel irrevocability.

As for my slowness as a writer - that's been a struggle, no question. We live in a culture that values and rewards machine-speed productivity. Even the arts are expected to conform to the Taylor model of productivity.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them.