Peru is a country where more than half the people would emigrate if given the chance. Thats half the population that is willing to abandon everything they know for the uncertainty of a life in a foreign land, in another language.

I like radio because you can do an hour-long interview and then three days later have a finished piece.

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.

At the most basic level, I appreciate writers who have something to say.

I guess in my own life I don't really think much about manliness too much. I feel like a lot of men that I know don't sit around thinking, How am I supposed to be a man? I don't think that I have to prove anything.

My first and last love will always be fiction. It's the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night. I love the novel because it's like a love affair. You can just fall into it and keep going, and you never know where it's going to take you.

A novel is like an animal you have to hunt down and kill. If you let it sit for two days, it's got a two-day head start. So, if I just look at it every day, I'm so much better off.

The bond between parent and child is chemical, fierce, and inexplicable, even if that parent is a sworn killer. This connection cannot be measured it at once more subtle and more powerful than science.

I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. It's obviously the central tool of how I work, and how I keep in touch with all the writers and then producers that I'm collaborating with. Skype saves my life, you know.

Radio is the medium that most closely approximates the experience of reading. As a novelist, I find it very exciting to be able to reach people who might not ever pick up one of my books, either because they can't afford it (as is often the case in Latin America), or because they just don't have the habit of reading novels.

I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. Im thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.

I write 1,000 words a day first thing in the morning but I cannot write 240 characters to describe a piece that I spent six weeks working on with a producer.

I have to really think hard about how to structure sentences, and do more mapping when I sit down to write, so it does impose a certain discipline, intellectual and linguistic.

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

Eduardo Halfon is a brilliant storyteller, whose gifts are displayed on every page of this beautiful, daring, and deeply humane book.