My idea of a meal, if I was hungry, was to open a bag of potato chips.

The only reason we write - well, the only reason why I write; maybe I shouldn't generalize - is so that I can find out something about myself. Writers have this narcissistic obsession about how we got to be who we are. I have to understand my ancestors - my father, his mother and her mother - to understand who I am. It all leads back to the narcissistic pleasure of discovering yourself.

There was a time when I used to go to Mexico every year. But then Mexico changed a lot - between 1995 and 2005, Mexico changed a lot.

If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.

Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.

I like to think about the bestseller list as, "This is the medicine cabinet of a very sick country." Let me look and see what they're reading that isn't nourishing them.

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