I don't really revise. I tend to rewrite.

I think immigrants, when they're stressed, think that there's something wrong with America, when it's really just difficult to leave a country and all that you know.

Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.

'Family Life' is a blueprint of my life. It was horrible and physically gruesome in a way the book doesn't attempt to capture. It was emotionally very bleak.

We are all human beings, immigrant or non-immigrant. We all feel fear. We all love and become confused when we don't act as well as we would like to. We all get depressed and have feelings of uselessness. All of these things are true and have always been true.

I thought it was quite wonderful coming to America. I think immigration is a very difficult thing, but America is a very wonderful place.