Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.

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.

Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.

It's difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story - a novel is a large story. I'm used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings.

I think one of the great primordial fears we have once we become conscious of our aloneness as children is the fear of losing our mother. We have that from the moment we realize we can lose her just in the supermarket. As a child, it was more terrifying than arithmetic.

That's why it's important to be multilingual, because it teaches you so much about your own language.

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