I often think that the reason capitalism hasn't completely destroyed everything is that a huge amount of anti-capitalist endeavor goes on, from labors of love, nurture, friendship, and barter to gift economies and different kinds of exchanges, not just one alternate model but a whole host of other ways in which we engage with each other and with the world that aren't financial and debt-based.

For me, before I learned how to read I was really interested in story and in landscape and nature. I decided to become a writer almost as soon as I learned to read.

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?

...[Cabeza de Vaca] ceased to be lost not by returning but by turning into something else.

There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.

I think that fear of the mob, the expectation that people, particularly poor and nonwhite people become mobs almost automatically in the absence of coercive authority, is inculcated by the media, the movies, and politicians.

I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America.