It's unfortunate that the country of immigrants has turned its back on immigrants. The atmosphere after 9/11 is toxic.

America's story is largely an immigrant story. That hasn't changed since the Pilgrims ate their first turkey some four hundred years ago, and they were the original boat people.

Today, more people are crossing various borders in order to survive, thrive, change their lives. Even if you don't cross the border, with demographic shifts, the border sometimes crosses you.

I think in a larger sense, immigrant narrative is comprehensive and speaks to the core of human experience.

I am glad to see the wheels are moving at last toward comprehensive immigration reform after last year's election. I am glad that immigrants are speaking up.

Art is the lesser sister to medicine. It aims to heal.

In the war on terrorism, the immigrant is often the scapegoat.

That experience of losing home, longing for home, that yearning for meaning and rootedness and identity in a floating world, it's what often makes an immigrant story into an American story .

Precious things lost are transmutable. They refuse oblivion. They simply wait to be rendered into testimonies, into stories and songs.

In non-fiction you have to stay true to historical events, be they personal or national .

I am hopeful that the pendulum swings toward seeing immigrants in favorable terms once more.

Never let anyone get the worst of you. For you too will become just like them

All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.

Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

My girls are very fashionable. They have a very good eye for marrying style and fashion.

The body will blossom and fade, but you will remain after this body of yours has gone away. This knowledge allows you to love the body without attachment. Thus, the body becomes absolutely pure.

I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics

I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

A forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable, in effect; a mass of one species of tree is sublime.

I recently assured Public Sector Banks they will have total autonomy in taking business decisions.