I love the kookiness of our speech. Speech is like wonderful magic and poetry in itself. I've always had to crib a lot from what I've heard.

[The biggest disappointment is] that he [Barack Obama] deported everybody and their grandmother.

The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.

It might interest you that just as the U.S. was ramping up its involvement in Vietnam, LBJ launched an illegal invasion of the Dominican Republic (April 28, 1965). (Santo Domingo was Iraq before Iraq was Iraq.)

I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness.

You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who's trying to get thin.

There's little question that short stories, like poetry, don't get the respect they deserve in the culture - but what can you do? Like Canute, one cannot fight the sea, you have to go with your love, and hope one day, things change.