I was reading Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks, and I'm still very, very deeply moved by Gwendolyn Brooks's life and her work.

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.

Look, kid, ” he said, “you don’t spend a lifetime in comedy without learning a thing or two about evil.

....and I'll know that this is what you live for - to hear someone say. "Let's go home, " to hear someone you love call your name.

An actor should always let humility outweigh ambition.

I decided it was well past time to take him home and place him in bosom of his family. If you had rather I put him in an orphanage, I fully understand.

There's no way that you can live an adequate life without making many mistakes.

I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.

Courtship is a commitment - it's a promise not to play games with another person's heart.

Up to a certain point anxiety is good, for it promotes action. Beyond that point we freeze any fixed attitudes or rush about without thinking deeply from one decision to another.

Part of what I enjoy about the theatre and acting is that sense of history.

Today the impulse towards interdependence is immeasurably greater. We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community.