I [read] "The Book of Unknown Americans," which is by a friend of mine, Cristina Henriquez, and is about two Latino, immigrant families who live in Delaware. I'm interested in reading things from different perspectives.

I read "The Conquest of New Spain" by Bernal Diz Del Castillo, which I recommend to a lot of people. He was an eyewitness of [Hernando] Cortez's conquest of Mexico. It's at once very brutal and at times very plodding. It tells what they did everyday, so days can go by and nothing happens. Then all of the sudden they are torturing and doing all these dark things.

I began reading in French. I didn't read in English until high school.

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

Immigration, a lexicon. You're a 'migrant' when you're very poor; 'immigrant' when you're not so poor; and 'expat' when you're rich.

There is a insularity within American fiction even for adults. It's very tough for books in translation in the US.

In some ways, I think it's the closest that we come to the truth — is in the form of fiction.