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

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

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.

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.

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.

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.