You have time. Meaning don't use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don't rush to meet it. Be a conduit.

I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

The novel is a big space, and a lot can happen. Just think about the parts of your life. How do we account for our own contradictions? The only way to understand them is to let them exist, as truths that indicate something about character. People are built of elements that don't fit together - and the conflict of that is their essential drive.

I do not consciously reclaim. I am not those "some readers" and so I think it would be impossible for me to see my work that way, as reclaiming a preserve. I write in a way that is aimed at all levels - conscious and unconscious - at pleasing the kind of reader I am. Some of the authors I read are male, some are female, and some are even in between. And speaking of in between, maybe now is as good a moment as any to point out that there might be no "feminine" or "masculine" literary sensibility, or sensibility generally.

I am interested in risk, in art as well as in the realm of politics.

Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.