I tend to be kind of literal about translation. I think it's important to present the writer as closely as possible.

I always hesitate to say that something is lifelike.

The truth is, just to hear other people speaking Italian is really worth it. It keeps the sound in your ear.

It's one of the hardest things to translate anything that's not standard.

I have very strict rules in my head that seem to me to be the way things should sound.

I think that physical actions are always hard to describe, to translate.

One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not.

That's a huge subject - a writer refusing to do publicity but writing about publicity.

To have the translator be a figure in the book's presentation seems like a big thing, especially for a book that's really popular.

The only day in your life.... Your mother smiled when you cried.

Republicans talk a good game about veterans, but when it came to put money on the line to protect our veterans, frankly, they were not there.

I'm one of the people who will hear a song in a taxi and be like, stop, stop the car. Like, let's go back. What was that?

What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.

She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at at a time.

For the record, Irish," he informed her tightly, just in case she got the wrong idea, "I kneel to no one.

I would just listen to the complaints about what I do instead of celebrating what I do, and that I'm different and in my own lane. It took a while for me to just ignore the doubts.

If you take a scotch whiskey and distill out the alcohol, what is left has an amazing taste to it and can be used as a flavoring for a dessert.

The moral sense is a natural faculty in us like the sense of smell or of touch.

The only thing I can't resist is temptation.