I'm always trying to, using literature, subvert people's responses.

I don't like being angry all the time; it's not good for me. I have to have serenity or else go to war.

I used to approach writing like a football game. If I went out there and aggressively saw more, I'd know more, and I'd capture more, and I'd write better. Hut, hut, hut: First down and haiku!

I came to believe the green fuse that drives spring and summer through the world is essentially a literary energy. That the world was more than a place. Life was more than an event. It was all one thing - and that thing was story.

I believe God is a poet; every religion in our history was made of poems and songs, and not a few of them had books attached.

A lot of our family was undocumented. My mom and dad were both super conservative. My dad had a green card; my mom was an Eisenhower Republican who did not approve of all the 'illegal people.'

During grade school, we moved to a white, working-class suburb in San Diego, and there were no Mexicans.

Writers write without support.

We're all funny. Humor unites us.

It became really important to me if I was going to write 'Hummingbird's Daughter' to try to do honor to women.