If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.

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 don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.

Don't settle! Embrace a dream--and keep dreaming. Don't be a bystander. Take it personally.

I'd love to see that rat nose smashed!

I believe we've... we've worked very hard with the Iraqis to build a better place ever since the fall of Saddam's government.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.

Most magicians are afraid of magic.

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

I should be writing a poem every morning but I'm not.