When I was a child, I was reading books filled with people different from me, all French, all foreigners. There was a sense of disconnect between my sense of imagination and the world around me, which I don't think is common for Americans. It forces you to learn to look at the world through other people's eyes.

The universe had an odd sense of fairness; it took away things one did not want to give up, and then gave things one did not ask for.

Thing that was very different for me is that an American child's reading is filled with Americans.

When I was a child, I was reading books filled with people different from me, all French, all foreigners. There was a sense of disconnect between my sense of imagination and the world around me, which I don't think is common for Americans. It forces you to learn to look at the world through other people's eyes.

I love James Baldwin essays, but also his novels. I recently read "Another Country." I couldn't believe how ahead of his time he was.

A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too.

I also read a lot of nonfiction. I just got "Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein. I felt like what with everything that is going on with the president [Donald trump] and the parallels with [Richard] Nixon's presidency, I needed to know more about the man.