I have spent a lot of time in the art world, and I guess I do listen to how people speak. I'm interested in what they say and how they say it.

Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I’m as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

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

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

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

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

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

To declare a thing is to possess it.

I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.

Some women have a pulsing energy almost too sharp and salty to endure and when they are in pain their pain is ferocious and shatters all over the place.

The Jews were God's chosen people.

We should never judge a day by its weather.

I hope to use dialogue and culture as a means of bringing people of various cultures together, and using that as a way to resolve conflict.

People say if bees die out, the world would end apparently. Now, I don't know if that's true, if that's some bee enthusiast who managed to write a good document and people believe this.

Bravura has nothing to do with technique. It's all about timing and oozing life.

I miss my mattress when I am gone; It's one thing I've made an impression on.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.