“[W]hen it comes to writing, I think amusing yourself is incredibly important. I'm very much for self-indulgence. Often when you do the thing that you really want to do the most, it’s the thing that you think no one will like, right? Because it's so weird that only you like it. But in my experience, that will often have the most reach and touch the most people.”

“When I am a guest author at colleges, most of the students I meet with are Latinx and often represent the first generation in their families to go to college. I often say to them that our stories are important. I then ask them: What would happen if we did not write our stories? And they always get it right: If we don’t write our stories, someone else will, and they will get them wrong.”

“For me, form matters a lot and the value of "how to say" is not less than "what to say." We Iranians share an expression saying "fit a sea in a cup" and to me, writing short poems corresponds to this expression.”