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It's a complicated process being so bilingual. Sometimes it's a mere word or sentence that comes to me, if I'm writing the book in English, in French. It's not always easy to deal with. Sometimes even during an interview somebody can ask me a question in English that I want to answer in French and vice versa - that's the story of my life!

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming.

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

I write the story that nobody reads. Someday, I'm going to write it in German to see if anyone notices.

Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish.

I always serve the writer first because I'm English trained, even though I'm American.

I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.

For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages.