Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.

And here I arrive at my point. The point is that everyone has a different dream. The point is that it is a grave mistake to assume your dream is in any way shared, that it’s a common dream. Not only is it not shared, not common, there is no reason to assume that other people don’t find you and your dream utterly revolting.

My mother told me many stories about her childhood in Cuba. Living there had a profound impact on her and how she regards herself.

I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. People are incredibly complicated. Who knows why they are the way they are?

There was lots of pleasure in writing The Flamethrowers. Then again, what is pleasure? Some pleasure is easy and other kinds are never quite felt, existing only as the residue of hard work, or more as satisfaction than thrill.

A lot of politics in art is just institutional critique, which, in my opinion, is not all that political.