Literature is breathing. I teach literature the way someone else might teach First Aid.

For me the path to the literary goes through the non - literary. For this reason it surprises me that I am a writer, or that people speak of me as a writer. I'm flattered, but I don't quite believe it.

The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else

I was born in Cuba but was made in the USA.

Teaching is my most reliable form of human contact. I love the opportunity to speak Spanish (which I don't do at home), the give-and-take with students, the surprises. One day you think you have the goods for a sensational class and it bombs. The next day you have nothing and the class turns out splendidly.

I say that being a smart writer doesn't make you a good writer. There's obviously a difference between talent and intelligence. And it may be that at some point intelligence begins to impinge on talent, or talent on intelligence.

There's a Cuban saying: Bicho malo nunca muere. Loose translation: The good die young but the wicked live forever. It seems to apply to Fidel. I hope it applies to me.