We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there’s an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.
If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you’re not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain’t different or original.
Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.
I feel most like myself… after I run – I go out for five miles every morning.
People are always fascinated by infidelity because, in the end – whether we’ve had direct experience or not – there’s part of you that knows there’s absolutely no more piercing betrayal. People are undone by it.
When I write, what I long for is not more realism or fiction but more courage. That’s what I always find myself short on and what I have to struggle to achieve in order that the work might live.
I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: ‘This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.’ I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.
‘A Princess of Mars’ may not have exerted the same colossal pull that Tarzan had on the global imagination, but its influence on generations of readers cannot be underestimated.
Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we’re always lacking something.
Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That’s just the truth of it.