I'm just kind of fascinated by how we can deny that we are animals and what our impact on the other animals is like, and how quixotic we can be in trying to assess what we've done in trying to correct it.

I think, if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm presenting a scenario for you as the reader to engage with on your own. I mean, that's what the best art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be political. I think if you read all my books, you know where I stand, pretty much.

I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it - in a world in which everything else is out of control.

I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don't always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning.

My problem is that the audience is more fiction-literate than ever. In Shakespeare's day, you probably expected to see a play once or twice in your life; today you experience four or five different kinds of fiction every day. So staying ahead of the audience is impossible.

I will always be the first Latina Cinderella, so I always have that to take with me, and I'm very proud of that. I believe that it was a life-changing experience for me.

No, I never - no one ever - I never learned anything when I was a kid. Honestly, my parents had nothing to tell me - like, no wisdom, nothing.

During the whole 'Jeopardy' experience, I felt like I was living a bit of a double life, I would be secretly flying out to L.A. to tape new shows, hoping that none of my coworkers would notice the absence and figure out what was going on. 'Jeopardy' tries very hard to keep their secrets.