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It's true that immigrant novels have to do with people going from one country to another, but there isn't a single novel that doesn't travel from one place to another, emotionally or locally.

I've always loved New York City and the idea of a cultural exchange: the immigrants coming to America.

It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.

I love how New York as an idea is less a paradigm of manifest destiny and more a romance for the social orphans of the world. We live here to be among the towers and the crowds.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

The culture of New York is just impossible to replicate. It's such an incredible feeling to be walking on the streets of New York. You can literally find everything you need in a five block radius oftentimes.

American literature has always been immigrant.

Everything in New York seems to merit preserving. If it's not historical, it's personal. If it's not personal, it's cultural. But you can't. You can't save everything. You just have to pack it up in your brain and take it with you when you go.

I seem to only write New York stories because it's the only thing that inspires or interests me.

Books set in Brooklyn and L.A. are often about people who are rootless, who want to go somewhere else. In the Midwest, though, the stories are about people who want to stay where they are - who like where they are.