My grandfather is Portuguese. He betrayed what was expected of him and married my grandmother of African descent on my father's side.

People seem very comfortable having a kind of Cheesecake Factory-type of life.

Whenever I went to an historical moment that was sad or where something terrible happened, it was, for me, a learning moment, a teaching moment for those who survived.

I usually feel something before I know it.

If you're just mired in privilege, there's nothing to learn; learning appears to be over.

Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.

Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.

I can't stay engaged for years with a book unless it has feelings. It can't be an idea for me - it has to be a felt thing.

Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way.

To work for God effectively, you have to expand and stretch yourself

Yes, she is.” His eyes remained on Olivia, but she wasn’t aware he was watching her. “With art, I believe anything created with profound heart is captured compulsively beautifully.

A person's willingness to conform to arbitrary parameters is not a good criterion for selecting talent or allocating rewards.

I'm not a lawmaker, but I was thinking that if you have a really loud ring tone, maybe you should be stabbed in the ear?

If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.

I'm never gonna try it, because you got to pay a lot for cocaine, and that's not the way I want to spend my money.

I beg you not to resort to demonstrations, for they have become nothing but burned paper.

Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled.

Be someone who listens, and you will be heard. Be someone who cares, and you will be loved. Be someone who gives, and you will be blessed. Be someone who comforts, and you will know peace.

Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.