Artist Quote by Porochista Khakpour

Addiction is a very compelling subject for literature - especially now that it's nearly impossible to come out of adult experience without some addiction…

— Porochista Khakpour

In South Pasadena, artists were around but invisible somehow. Even though it was just a fifteen-minute drive from Downtown LA, it felt worlds apart.…

— Porochista Khakpour

I both loved and hated South Pasadena. On the one hand, it was so diverse - all my closest friends were immigrants or had…

— Porochista Khakpour

There is less gray area there, less doubt. There is a security in being some thing all the way. Our culture, too, encourages this…

— Porochista Khakpour

The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left…

— Porochista Khakpour

I write very raw, ugly, illiterate first drafts very quickly (novels are always in first draft in under a year) and then I spend…

— Porochista Khakpour

It [9/11 tragedy] has affected us on so many levels: economically, morally, spiritually, ethically. It's been all over the place. A new American identity…

— Porochista Khakpour

The radical is simply being given more room in the mainstream. And I think young people - I'm talking about the very young millennials…

— Porochista Khakpour

My characters' addictions are what makes them a bit stylized or "grotesque" - not just in appearance but through what drives them. Addiction is…

— Porochista Khakpour

I wanted to literalize the surreal here. Those are my favorite kinds of stories. I love when Gabriel García Márquez does that, for instance…

— Porochista Khakpour

I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted…

— Porochista Khakpour

9/11 was just an enormous event in so many senses of the word - I mean, we are still in the "post-9/11 era" and…

— Porochista Khakpour