In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.

She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

To produce that identity among young people required guinea pigs.

She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.

The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.

Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.

In '94, I started writing a novel about an enormous terrorist act that destroyed the United States. The novel takes place twenty years after this destruction, with all the stuff that we're dealing with now - a dirty war, the disappeared, the concept of terrorism. Anyway, 9/11 happened some years into the process, and I was like, OK, I don't have a novel.