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It's difficult to write about poverty in a way that doesn't feel cliched.

I consider myself a writer who writes about American expatriates. And if I have any overt cause as a writer besides writing the best prose I can, it's to try to make Americans have a more visceral feeling about how America impacts everybody in the world.

I'm an immigrant and I've always wanted to write something about America.

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort.

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.

Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.

Being a writer is a poverty trap. I mean, it's a terrible profession.