I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.

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 I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?

Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.

In times of adversity and affliction, may you wait for the Lord to rescue and deliver you.

You have always understood and accepted my most genuine, most intimate impulses and responded to them with surprising accuracy. I wish all people turned into such mirrors for each other.

Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.

You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.

John Barry was my hero when I was about 13. His scores to the James Bond movies were the scores of my life back then.

I keep a great organiser, I try to keep my priorities in the right place.

You might be a redneck if your vehicle has a two-tone paint job - primer red and primer gray.

The small prayers of weak and broken people move the heart of God.