"One of the first people I read was García Márquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude when I was about nineteen or eighteen. And Julio Cortázar. I read all of Jorge Amado. I can tell you I read everybody and everything. And they would drive me nuts! But I was compelled to it. I was driven to the mechanics of what they were doing...I read and reread Julio Cortázar to try to learn from the writer the labyrinth of his style...I think he is one of the best examples of playing with time. When I was going to write The Mixquiahuala Letters I was twenty-three, and I had this idea about playing with time-that time was fluid-and I mentioned this project to a friend of mine, who was getting his Master's in Spanish literature, and he said that's already been done!"