Oh Esperanza!' said Isabel, jumping up and down and clapping.'I think my heart is dancing.

I am poor, but I am rich. I have my children, I have a garden with roses, and I have my faith and the memories of those who have gone before me. What more is there?

There is no rose without thorns.

We are like the phoenix," said Abuelita. "Rising again, with a new life ahead of us.

Wait for the fruit to fall into your hand.

You never have to get over it you just have to get on with it.

How many others were walking around and not even knowing that someone far away cared for them? Imagine all that love floating in the air, waiting to land on someone's life!

This is what you learned in college," the narrator tells you early on. "A man desires the satisfaction of his desire; a woman desires the condition of desiring.

Music does not have a race or a disposition! ... Every instrument has a voice that contributes. Music is a universal language...Music surpasses all distinctions between people.

... and her name was Freedom.

Face your fears and you will be able to conquer them.

We eat breads, and we eat it with butter.While some brothers, starve for water and leave near the gutter.

Eating together is the most intimate form of kinship. By scripting a work where we share the same kind of food with fish, I'm scripting our interrelationship with them.

There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who's driving it.

Mere exactitude, of which photography and moulage [life casting] are the lowest forms, does not inspire feelings.

You can only conceive of what lies beyond the state of mind you are in from the point of view of the state of mind you are in.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

Charles looked at her thoughtfully. "People talk to you," he said. "That could be useful.

Multiplicity is a delusion. Unity is the Reality.

A first novel should be brash and ambitious, and announce the arrival of a new talent.