“My mother's father was from Brazil - a painter, and not a famous one - and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.”

“When I was a child I had a nightmare, and in the morning, I asked my mother and father, 'If I kill someone, would you still love me?' My parents were very preoccupied with this, but I think I'm not...”

“'Chocolat' was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me a...”

“Coming from Chicago, I like a white Christmas.”

“The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths ...”

“What I have is P.H. positive chronic myeloid leukemia, which is an aberration in your white blood cells.”

“As hard as we strive, man remains a perfect imperfect being.”

“People were crazy with pain and secrets.”

“Its not like I planned it. I never woke up from some rosy dream and said, Okay, world, today Im gonna spaz.”

“It's often the material things that provide the essence of memory.”

“One of my favourite parts of writing is doing the research. It's the door into that magical reading/writing state - the raw material for making the story real.”