People always think there's this huge hundred-foot-high barrier that separates doing good from doing bad. But there's not. There's nothing. There's n….

Once I start writing, I am a huge reviser. To me writing is revising. I probably turn over every sentence that I write, to see if I have the rhythm r….

When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me i….

When I was in school, I was very much into just sports, mostly basketball, and didn't really see myself as much of a student. But once I got into col….

Growing up as a mixed-race kid myself, when you are in the middle of it and you're young...you don't think about it consciously. It's your reality..

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying ….

Being the first to go to college in my family was a great thing, but it was also a source of guilt. I felt like almost a sellout going to college..

But when you read books you almost feel like you're out there in the world. Like you're going on this adventure right with the main character. At lea….

As an author, you go into the school, it gets written about in the paper. It sucks that your book was banned, but you almost benefit from it. The bum….

The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed ….

I think we all try to figure out ways to ignore the fact that life is about suffering. In the modern world, that's what we're surrounded with. We hav….

I worked in a schizophrenic home when I was an undergrad. You learned to be jaded to the crazy things they would say to you, but there was one man th….

When you first quit your regular job and you become a full-time writer, you are paralyzed with free time. You have so much free time. When you are at….

I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural literature - i….

The whole guilt thing of not feeling Mexican enough was a big deal, too. On the one hand, you have your grandmother who is anointing you as a chosen ….

But mostly I remember every morning before school. How she'd say "Hey, honey!" just I was walking out the apartment door. And me stopping and turning….

When I'm following what a character does in a book I don't have to think about my own life. Where I am. Why I'm here. My moms and my brother and my o….

When I finish a book, I'll go to that file and look through them. And I'll say, these are three that really excite me and I want to do them next. You….

To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the n….

The second book, which was probably more from a professional standpoint - when I read Junot Díaz's Drown, I was like, Oh my god, you can write these ….

I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to e….