When I was very young I was reading a lot of Latin American fiction, which later would be called "boom fiction."

I was interested in cross-pollinating the two. I thought there was something lovely in the little vignette forms. I wanted to explore that.

[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it."

I feel like I am in a box of bees when I am in a room with lots of people and I'm just looking for the door. I find myself getting more and more agoraphobic as time goes on.

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.

Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you.

The ideal for me is to mix it up. When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre.