What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

I'm not a science fiction writer, I'm a physicist.

Fiction is nothing but non-fiction couched to conceal the identity of the writer.

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

These paintings say Mexico is an ancient thing that will still go on forever telling its own story in slabs of color leaves and fruits and proud naked Indians in a history without shame. Their great city of Tenochtitlan is still here beneath our shoes and history was always just like today full of markets and wanting.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.