Violence, factory politics - these things simply form some bedrock of what interests me, but I'm a child of the twentieth century. And I don't see reality and its violence, wars, oppression, etc., and fiction as counterposed.

I'm releasing myself from the responsibility of claiming to know when something is good and when it isn't.

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 don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.

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

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.