By college, I had a really grand, preposterous vision of myself as becoming a writer, but I don't think I had the discipline or the patience - or the ability or the humility. It took 20 years to acquire those things.

The refugees are not only going to be a demand on the country's resources, but also the refugees raise the possibility that the countries that they're going to are themselves not as stable as the citizens would like, I think. We're all just one catastrophe away from ending up as a refugee, and we don't want to be reminded of that.

People might like to think a war is done when a cease fire is signed, but for most people who lived through a war it goes on for decades.

If you're a so-called minority writer, the temptation is to write for the majority... I refuse to do that.

No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

Refugees have been displaced by war or natural disaster or political catastrophes, and they are much more threatening because they are reminders to people that all the comforts that we take for granted can be taken away in just a moment.

In the United States, the immigrant experience occupies a very central place in American mythology. And sometimes, that place wavers between acceptance and rejection.