Even if you're an agnostic or an atheist, you can create an altar, because an altar is simply paying homage to someone's life and celebrating what they did.

I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate

People like to blame Mexican food, but look at what's happening globally, look at all the fast foods and products filled with trans fat. Before the Mexican Revolution, a hundred years ago, people were eating what now macrobiotics tells us to eat, corn, black beans, rice. That's what people were eating - and chile peppers. That's a healthy diet.

Spanish is a poetic language, in particular the Spanish of Mexico which has a wonderful animistic attitude you might not see in the Spanish of the peninsula. I think it has to do with the indigenous way of looking at nature.

There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world.

I have to take care of the house, and the dogs, and the Macondo Board meetings, all those e-mails, the letters that are going to fans. And you've got to pay bills. These things eat up your time. You have to prepare and pack to go on that trip. Then when you come back you have to file all that stuff, answer all that mail, and that's not even washing the clothes or any of that. So it takes as many days as I've been away to come back to normal and to get quiet.

I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.