I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

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.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

When people score films, the job is to be visual. When people make music, it's about evoking feeling. It's great when you get both feelings and being out of their head.

We have very substantial weaknesses, including all vital infrastructures.

You just have to learn to get really good at choosing your moments and making sure that your story isn't overwhelmed by the effects, and that your emotional storyline is what's driving the train.

I like 'Unsung' but I'd rather have a 'Behind the Music' while I'm still breathing.

All men are created unequal.

The greatest hits in some weird way marks the end of something.

I knew I was going to be a journalist, and that was it.. full stop.

Music speaks to people at a level that is much more universal and can kind of trigger things in the listener in ways that other forms of communication can't.

My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so: I am a storyteller.