My father grew up in an era when to be an American - a white American, at least - was to be yourself. In some respects, his generation was more ignor….

Whereas if I want to create a prostitute character now from memories of different prostitutes and inventing stuff, I can say, "this could happen," "t….

Maybe life is a process of trading hopes for memories..

I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game. There's a ….

Are you a censor? Do you tell people not to say “girl”? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you’re a saint or you’re psychotic. If a few things off….

We're living in what used to be Mexico, and there's this very fluid border feeling. You go a little bit south of Tijuana, for instance, into Ensenada….

Oh, ants, my sisters, good old honeydew-seekers! From close up you are sticky and shiny and gristly; and your nymphs have parasitic red mites stuck t….

Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living..

I want to fall in love with beautiful women of all races. Rescue somebody every now and then, improve my painting, and improve my sentence structure.….

Just for the hell of it, try to love someone as unlike you as possible..

So he lent her books. After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; mos….

If this advertisement be not sufficient, I can only protrude my wormlike tendrils of apology, craving forbearance on the grounds that a writer must w….

Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?.

Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what viol….

At least I hope - that the fiction I've written so far has flaws but has mostly been successful..

There are parts of L.A. that feel very, very Mexican, and there are weird little enclaves of Northside in Mexico - Cancún for instance. So what is a ….

Most literary critics agree that fiction cannot be reduced to mere falsehood. Well-crafted protagonists come to life, pornography causes orgasms, and….

When I go train hopping and I look up into the sky, there are always so many more stars than I remember there were..

I decided that there is really some sort of entity that I call Imperial, and I decided to extend it all the way along the California-Mexico border an….

There will come a time when nobody reads my books and no one remembers who I was. And in the meantime, I'll do it my way..

The instant people specialize, its in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon..