Said Sayrafiezadeh

The thematic links came a little later, after I noticed I was gravitating towards certain elements - war, city, weather. So it…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

More people work at Walmart than anywhere else in the United States, but you wouldn't know that from our literature. I'm trying…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

When the ending finally comes to me, I often have to backtrack and make the beginning point towards that ending. Other times,…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

Stasis is something that has marked my life since I was a boy growing up in Pittsburgh with my mother. It was…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

I wake when my wife wakes, at 7:30 A.M. I'd like to sleep longer, but she has to go off to work,…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

I liked the push and pull of that, between the outer political world and the inner personal lives of the characters. It's…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

Since most of the action of the war actually happens off the page (offstage), I wanted to give the characters something they…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother.…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

The year the bus drivers went on strike in Pittsburgh, I was twenty-three and living on the edge of the city in…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

I have no personal experience in the military. All I know about it is what I've seen in movies and read in…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

Love and happiness inextricably combined? I wanted love stories to coincide with war stories, I wanted hope for my characters, I wanted…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh

This is one of the ways fiction is more liberating than nonfiction - I don't have to be so concerned with fact.…

— Said Sayrafiezadeh