I need to have spent sometime in a place, smelled it, seen the vegetation, the architecture, the brand names of the shops [to write about it]. But [even] if it’s do-able for me to revisit a place, I make a conscious decision not to because I trust the imagination’s memory to put it together. I think you can get too literal. I want the literal and the factual and the real to anchor the fictional dream, but I don’t want to be too loyal to the facts of the place and get bogged down with that. 

ANDRE DUBUS