Every writer I admire is my teacher. If you look at it, and if you care to read carefully enough and to read and reread a text, you teach yourself something about craft.

I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.

My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.

You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this.

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.

If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.

People know when you're speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That's very powerful.

The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.

You don't want somebody who doesn't know his own heart, do you? You'll find someone who's brave enough to love you. Someday. One day. Not today.

If you can win an argument by stretching your lips for a smile, why open your mouth and lose it.

You should be kissed and often, by someone who knows how.

The object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion.

Educational enterprises do not for any length of time remain immune from the struggle of interests for power which is the dominant feature of social life under a class system.

To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.

Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, 'Your time is up.'

I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion.

We're just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can't tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that.

I definitely tell things at arm's length but that is conscious. No part of me wants everybody to know what's going on.

Don’t worry that you’ve wasted time. Each moment -- no matter how frozen or confused -- was a useful and necessary lesson.