My friend, Dennis Mathis, was reading Eastern European and Japanese experimental writers, and I brought the Latin American writers to his attention, so we exchanged books and bounced off one another.

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.

When you slowly and gently get lost in love, you become infinite.

The amount of money you owe doesn't matter

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

I think honest communication, no matter where it comes from, is positive for a relationship.

The key that unlocks your greatness is deliberate, disciplined and consistent effort.

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards

Baseball was my main sport, but I peaked when I reached high school and so my baseball career stopped.

I'm hoping that Penn State will one day be able to find a cure for cancer. Being a part of THON means I'm doing my part to find that cure.

Iraq has not been disarmed 100 percent [but] in terms of what they [Iraqis] have accomplished there are no meaningful weapons or weapons production capability in Iraq today.

We must continue to deepen our ties to the Americas and the Caribbean, our common work to educate children, fight drugs, strengthen democracy, and increase trade.