I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.

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.

Children are the closest we have to wisdom, and they become adults the moment that final drop of everything mysterious is strained from them.

Beneath the broad tides of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depth the changes that take place upon the surface.

There are skeptics who do not come to their view because they have a source of income from carbon polluters.

I'm running for governor; I'm not running for a legislative office.

There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral.

Shooting someone point blank still generates an explosion out of the end of a gun, even if the projectile is somehow ineffective.

I got a phone call saying we are from the News of the World, and we're exposing you and David Beckham. My heart did not beat for a minute.

Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream. I'm not, she said.

Bad friends could ruin your whole life. Be wise when it comes to choosing your friends. You set the standard. You be the one who stands strong. Don't be a follower.

Recognizes ever and anon The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul.