You meditate and then you can put on your pajamas, or you can imagine you're wearing your pajamas, and you talk about your piece of writing in the language you would use if you were wearing your pajamas and you were seated at a table with your very good friend. And you wouldn't have to get all dressed up or clean up the table.

Sometimes I feel I can't quite master my written and spoken Spanish, because I'm too much a student of English. I would need another lifetime to learn it.

There [DreamTigers by Jorge Luis Borges] were these little fablesque things, you know, dream tigers, beautiful, beautiful pieces that when you read them had the power of a long piece, but they were prose, and they had the power of poetry, in that the last line wasn't the end, it was a reverberation, like when you tap on a glass made of crystal, and it goes ping.

When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.

I never know what something is going to be until it emerges from the womb and you see the crown of its head and then you see it pushing its way up. So in my life if another book wants to be born it's not for me to choose.

Heartbreak makes us stronger; it's an opportunity for spiritual growth. How can you understand someone else's pain if you have not yourself suffered?

As an artist, I have to be the ambassador of everything.