There's no perfect place, there's no wonderful utopia.

True love in Mexico isn't between lovers; it's between a parent and a child. Mexico is a very intense culture of sons adoring their mothers, and this is why I claim that Mexican culture is matriarchal. Because the one constant, faithful, inviolable, holy love of loves - the love of your life - is not your wife or your lover; it's your mother.

We have all this courage as writers, but then there's this fear.

I feel the fear touches on something deeper. A sense perhaps of, "My life is speeding past me and I can't get a handle on it."

I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.

"You're next, after the feather dancers." And you had to get their attention, because otherwise people would go, "Oh, a poet." You really have to learn.

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.