I never imagined that I would be the kind of person who is recognized when I am out and about just living my life.

I'll learn how to rest, though. I can still learn new tricks.

I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.

If people cannot be flawed in fiction there's no place left for us to be human.

People do terrible things all the time, but we don’t regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things.

Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.

I thought a lot about how so many memoirs about fatness focus on weight loss; they don't focus on living with weight in a world that is rather inhospitable to it. So I knew that was the idea that was going to be most interesting and most challenging, and I like to be challenged as a writer.