Now I feel life is really short and I have to take care of things.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

The good thing about Dennis [ Mathis] is, even though he's a white, he respected that I was doing something quirky with my English. He loved it when I would mix up the Americanisms and say, "That's water over the dam."

The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

One of the things I like to pack, that I take with me all the time, is my Virgensita de Guadalupe. It doesn't take much room in your suitcase. If you have one that isn't so fancy, you can use it on the plane when you're scared.

The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.