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.

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.

There are writers I return to no matter what I'm working on, writers like the South African J.M. Coetzee. He has an ability to make you feel that he is writing for you alone.

No one wrote better about the sin of pride, the corruption of power and the redemption of love. I will miss you, Gabriel García Márquez.

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.

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.

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.