“…my life has been a remarkable one. Maybe one day someone will write a book about me . . .” "I’ve never much cared for horror stories.”

“My wish has always been to write my own story, to create a life that’s worth writing about. But is a story worth anything at all if I have no one to tell it to?”

“Writing about myself (in MI VIDA), has given me a feeling that I had never had before- that the past is like a story, in which one thing led to another, and that life is not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that can be somewhat comprehended. Thinking about writing? You just have to start with one story...”

“As for 'too much description,' well, opinions differ. We write the books we want to read. And I want to read books that are richly textured and full of sensory detail, books that make me feel as if I am experiencing a story, not just reading it. Plot is only one aspect of telling a tale, and not the most important one. It is the journey that matters, not how fast you arrrive at the destination.That's my view, anyway. Others writers differ, of course. There are hundreds of books where everything is subordinate to advancing the plot, some of them quite fine, but my work has never been about that, and never will be.”

“I can't help but think of the years and years of awful I’ve had. My years of horror and sadness just seem to never fully rest. This life of mine has been an absolute agony.”

“Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.”