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.

Think about the books that you were reading at a certain crisis in your life, what you were reading, and that's because you needed them to nourish your alma.

[Dennis Mathis] was very sensitive about keeping the unique way that I spoke English - it had a lot of Mexicanisms or Mexican syntax. So you keep it in because it's adding something unique.

Why don't we have people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Marshall Rosenberg and Nelson Mandela solving violent situations in a peaceful way?

I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.

My book would come out in one language, then it would come out in another language, then it would come out in One City, One Read, and I was always being called away from my desk.

I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.