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.

Few [books] get translated and the ones that do have trouble making it into the mainstream. It's more likely that Americans will discover another culture through an American writer rather read a writer from that culture.

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.

The ones that were relevant while I wrote my book were books like "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, which is based on a historical fact, "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow, and "True History of the Kelly Gang" by Peter Carey.

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.

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.