The stories are what no one wants to talk about. So you make up a story because no one is going to tell you the truth.

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.

The group of people in front of her was jovial and paid her no attention. The group behind was much the same. She was alone without being alone.

As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.

If I was a fan of someone as a teenager, then it's OK for me to feel completely in awe when I meet them.

Nobody really wants to work anymore. Nobody has the dedication to say, "It's going to take me ten years to get through this thing."

Pain makes you stronger. Fear makes you braver. Heartbreak makes you wiser.

I think when dictionaries define words, there's a sort of hair-splitting that to most people doesn't make any sense, which is we're not describing what a thing is.

Do you have to have emotional turmoil to create music? I'm not sure because I've never been without it

You know what really offers you satisfaction? Offering others what you have to give.

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent.