I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

How emigration is actually lived - well, this depends on many factors: education, economic station, language, where one lands, and what support network is in place at the site of arrival.

I love to walk through the streets of Jesus Maria and Pueblo Libre. The Spanish colonial buildings are in bright colors, two stories high, with these intricate wooden, windowed balconies.

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.

Ask any human being alive if they're the same person they were seven years ago and they're going to tell you they aren't.

I have to really think hard about how to structure sentences, and do more mapping when I sit down to write, so it does impose a certain discipline, intellectual and linguistic.

When I started writing seriously in high school, English was the language I had at my disposal - my Spanish was domestic, colloquial, and not particularly literary or sophisticated.

For fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

As a boy, I wanted to be the Peruvian Diego Maradona. Sadly, Peru hasnt made the World Cup since 1982, so I guess I did well to choose something different.

I'm a believer in the benefits of translation. It's a necessity and a privilege - it would be awful to be limited to reading authors who's work was composed in the languages I happen to have learned.

I like radio because you can do an hour-long interview and then three days later have a finished piece.

If you're having a bad day, just remember, like my videos, life will only get better!

If books had not bound together the experiences of former generations, the shackles of later generations in their forgetfulness would not have been loosed.

God knows how to turn your helplessness into strength

If a player is trying to intimidate a skilled player on your team, what do we want? We want our skilled players playing, so we shouldn't be doing that.

There is a hunger in this digital age to hear authors together, to participate in programs, to just be in a place, a community space.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.

Without question, dying on 'Lost' was the best thing I have ever done in my entire career.

I got serious about painting at 12, when most people give up.

Come on,'he says.' I have something else to show you.