My African roots made me what I am today. They’re the reason I’m from the Dominican Republic. They’re the reason I exist at all. To these roots I owe everything.

But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.

If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.

In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

You can't regret the life you didn't lead.

She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.

Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.

She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.

Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.

Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

When you mark where your self-doubt is, then you can begin to conquer it.

Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a licence?

On n'e chappe pas a' son sort. One cannot escape destiny.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful about everything.

In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it.

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

When all else is gone, God is left, and nothing changes Him.

I think, if you've got children, that's your life. Your 'showbiz' life, if you want to call it that, is a separate thing, and it isn't everything to me.

But even if you should betray me, I will forgive you.