I read fiction all the time. It's true that I don't like fantasy or science fiction. I like "realistic" novels, particularly those in which nothing much ever happens.

The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else

My writing, such as it is, grows out of my sense of discolation, I mean, dislocation. Having lost my place, I write to find my place, or to find once again that I have lost my place.

I was born in Cuba but was made in the USA.

Every book I think will be my last one because after finishing I have the sense that I've said all I have to say, but I always seem to find a new way of repeating myself.

My father's death took me to a place I had never been and a place I had never left. In his absence, I've had to rely more on myself.

I am a loner by nature, and then I'm a writer, which makes me twice a loner.

There's a Cuban saying: Bicho malo nunca muere. Loose translation: The good die young but the wicked live forever. It seems to apply to Fidel. I hope it applies to me.

Literature is breathing. I teach literature the way someone else might teach First Aid.

The fact that Iam writing to youin Englishalready falsifies what Iwanted to tell you.My subject:how to explain to youthat I don't belong to Englishthough I belong nowhere else, if not herein English.

The fact that Iam writing to youin Englishalready falsifies what Iwanted to tell you.My subject:how to explain to you that Idon't belong to Englishthough I belong nowhere else

If you look into the face of evil, evil's gonna look right back at you

I wish I could invent a square, said everyone.

Life is science.

You blame me for this, don't you?" he says."I don't need to. You're doing a better job.

Rob Chilson's mordant wit will keep you turning the pages until the wee hours!

Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.

You know you have a lot of impatience with reality as you see it when you're a young man and full of dynamism and strength and ideals and so on.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.