I'm interested in history because it's a discipline that requires a lot of effort from the imagination. You need to put in a lot of imaginative effort to figure out how people lived in an era that is not yours. And in that understanding of people from a different era, I feel, is an important gateway into humanity. Because you understand human behavior. In order to understand humanity, history is important.

I feel history is more of a story than a lesson. I know this idea of presentism: this idea of constantly evoking the past to justify the present moment. A lot of people will tell you, "history is how we got here." And learning from the lessons of history. But that's imperfect. If you learn from history you can do things for all the wrong reasons.

My books serve as archives of thoughts and emotions, like a tonal history that captures how I felt at a certain time of my life. It's not very informational. You're not going to get comprehensive knowledge about the Han dynasty of China or about India's Emergency. But you might learn how one person felt about the Los Angeles Olympics.

People are interested in relevant stories. In big events. But I'm not interested in big things; I'm interested in the smaller details of life.

As a non-western artist, you have to ask yourself a question fairly early in your life: do I want to become a bridge maker, do I want my culture to be understood by the west? I have no intentions of doing such things. I'm fine being a little strange to a non-western audience. It doesn't bother me if my book doesn't change a generation of American readers.

What fiction does is bring you closer to the essence of truth, as opposed to simply giving you the truth. And there's no knowing truth. Truth seekers are all charlatans. You can only feel the truth of something.

People are infinitely more interesting than characters that I come up with. Because the characters I come up with are basically combinations of people I've met. Combinations. You select certain details, that's all.