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

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

As to the "traditional filler of twenty-first century realist fiction," maybe that is something I avoid. I don't relate to standard psychologizing in novels. I don't really believe that the backstory is the story you need. And I don't believe it's more like life to get it - the buildup of "character" through psychological and family history, the whole idea of "knowing what the character wants." People in real life so often do not know what they want. People trick themselves, lie to themselves, fool themselves. It's called survival, and self-mythology.

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.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

People who experience themselves as authentic are also experiencing themselves as myth, but that's not the narrative they're going with.

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.