I write for the people I grew up with. I took extreme pains for my book to not be a native informant. Not: 'This is Dominican food. This is a Spanish word.' I trust my readers, even non-Spanish ones.

Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family.

I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse.

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.

Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.

She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves

We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain.

Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done.

I think the average guy thinks they're pro-woman, just because they think they're a nice guy and someone has told them that they're awesome. But the truth is far from it.

[Donald] Trump is taking America's dirty laundry to the center stage. Everything he does, the rest of the country already does really well: victimize immigrants, poor people, women.

The altitude of any relation is possible through discourse.

To anger female voters in America is to tread on the tiger's tail. Women turn out in huge numbers, and they are well aware of how their bodies work and what they need.

My greatest life lesson has been to not wait for the opportunities to come to me. I realize how important it is to be proactive and to create the opportunities myself.

From Day 1 I wasnt planning to run until I am very old.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

I will not stop fighting against Islam until I have achieved freedom for our country.

When once thy foot enters the church, be bare. God is more there than thou: for thou art there Only by his permission. Then beware, That leads from earth to heaven.

I always take time for somebody who wants to talk to me.

Every Republican that I know of ran on the full repeal of Obamacare...The voters have spoken.

He looked like the king of muscle beach and he was a surfer. But he had vision. He believed that for a city to be great, it had to have a great newspaper.