I have worked really hard to defy categorization, to break down a taxonomy whenever it comes my way.

Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that.

The past was so past it hurt.

I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.

Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.

I judged about a zillion awards this year so Ive been reading a lot of books that just came out.

It's also true, however, that having conquered the regional writer ghetto, I am now intent on conquering the nationalist writer ghetto and moving out into the world more.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.

Major theme of the book ["Hotels of North America"], from my point of view: what is persona, what is self, in the digital sphere, and/or what is the effect of it on self in a prolonged interaction.

If you learn to be grateful and celebrate each day, you have mastered the secret to living.

Mom used to tell me not to worry when people didn't get me. People throw rocks at things that shine - from the mixed up files of Tilly Adam's journal

The days hardened with cold and boredom like last year's loaves of bread. One began to cut them with blunt knives without appetite, with a lazy indifference.

A life of reaction is a life of slavery intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action not reaction.

I almost fainted. There was no family history. I had been eating a vegetarian diet and I exercised.

Sometimes I think opposable thumbs were invented so teenage girls could use text messaging.

For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.'

I wanted to wipe the grin off his face with a fist. I resisted the urge. Who says I have no self-control?

Some ideas take you to the stars; some sinks you to the mud!

Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.