I think a lot of the most interesting immigrant writing involves stepping outside of that old, dreary binary. Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is a great example. Same goes for Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.

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.

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

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

If you were a nerd computer geek in 1982, the amount of isolation you felt - at least what I experienced, or the kids I knew, the isolation they felt - was almost total. They were not part of society; no one thought they were cool.

You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.

I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.