For me, a story's a story if people want to hear it; it's very much based on oral storytelling. And for me, a story is a story when people give me the privilege of listening when I'm speaking it out loud.

I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable.

When I was writing Caramelo the last couple of years, a sixty-hour work week was normal. And now I'm lucky if I have eight hours.

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

You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh . . ." Now my tactics are different.

The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say.

You want to be able to say anything when you do your first draft, because some of that goofy stuff that you think has nothing to do with it is probably where the mother lode is.