When you write fiction, you can sort of invent more but also pack it with emotions that are very pertinent to you. Whereas with nonfiction, you have to be as factual as possible but also hopefully - also bring... emotional relevance to the piece.

If you start believing all that press about you, you're in trouble. I don't even read my reviews.

Nightclubs are the equivalent of a Catholic Church in a poor country. You hear a lot of stuff about churches filled with gold while the people are starving. But what elitists don't get is that for poor people, the church is their own mansion. Nightclubs fill the same function.

People in their forties, fifties, and onward enjoy the whole world of books in a different way than the Internet-age kids do.

As a kid I had all kinds of questions about how I fit it with my neighborhood and friends and other Latinos.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.