I have this great fear of Mexico City. I won't go to Mexico City unless someone meets me at the airport and is with me. I just feel very vulnerable there.

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.

The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.

Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. [...] You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.

It's what's available to the poor communities. They do buy healthy stuff, you know, but the lettuce is usually iceberg lettuce and to get any taste, they have to use all that ranch dressing.

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

I don't close myself to the possibility of someplace outside the United States, but it would have to be someplace with an indigenous community, because that's where I feel at home.