I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level..

The VW doesn’t make you think of Hitler and genocide. It’s a breast on wheels, a puffy little dream..

I had been thinking about rubber all along. Like as the novel's element, or base material. A lot of artists in the late '60s and early '70s worked wi….

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need..

While it might be true that our reality would suggest that more writers would address these elemental issues of modern life - work, the marketplace, ….

Eventually, I decided that if I was going to really write a novel, I couldn't do it in New York City while holding down a job. You need a constant mo….

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, w….

I'm happy to be a woman but much of it was learned over the course of life. Really thudded into me. You learn it. It's a kind of mastery and artistry….

And here I arrive at my point. The point is that everyone has a different dream. The point is that it is a grave mistake to assume your dream is in a….

I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground..

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious..

I am interested in risk, in art as well as in the realm of politics..

In writing novels, you have to believe in yourself or there would be no way to sustain it. But you also have to give good evidence regularly for havi….

The novel is a big space, and a lot can happen. Just think about the parts of your life. How do we account for our own contradictions? The only way t….

I guess I still feel that way and yet I'm slightly hesitant to insist on that idea, that it "better be fun for the writer." Or rather, that if it is,….

It's unfortunately true that if you mess up a single detail of the art world the whole thing seems false, and most writers are not in a position to g….

People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You're driven to love them. People who want their love e….

I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way..

I love to be alone, I find it necessary, but I don't know if that's just how I am or if it's an essential ingredient to making, to art. Certainly on ….

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us..

I think art is much more about an engagement with the world, a way of being called upon and recognizing that the world is speaking to you. Which isn'….