When you win, we win; but when you go down, you go down alone.

Nobody supported me; my family thought I had gone crazy. They thought, you crazy gangster, you crazy drug addict, now you want to be a writer? That's it! They totally gave up on me after that.

Nobody had books at home. My dad was a very educated person, so he would have books at home. All Spanish books. That helped. Most of my homies had no books at home.

The more you know, the more you owe.

I'm not really anti-gang - I was a gang member and so was my son. I'm pro-youth, pro-community, pro-family, pro-arts, and pro-peace.

There are choices you have to make not just once

Eventually I went back to high school. I went to a coaching center in my neighborhood. I had to leave the homeless situation because it was so bad and I knew that I was falling deeper and deeper.

I've always been prepared to write about the hard things. Only for healing, teaching, and enlightening purposes not to hurt or disparage anyone.

In order to stay out of trouble I worked in industry. You can't even do that nowadays; there were all those factories.

I was kind of a weird homie; I was a weird kid. Nobody in my family loved books. I'm the only one.

The dream provides inspiration and motivation. The goal generates drive and momentum. But daily effort on the details is the fuel that gets you to your dream.

If you have dreams you want to pursue, the time to pursue them is now. There is no perfect time, and there is no better time. There is only the time you lose while you're making excuses.

You earn brotherhood—the purest friendship, trust, love, whatever you want to call it—moment by moment through how you treat others.

I would like to write a suicide note in three and a halflanguagesand travel south on a Thursday towardssome form of life outside of earth

As men get older, the toys get more expensive.

Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change.

Don't let anyone define you. You define yourself.

Great love leaves little doubt.

People don't remember you for all of the good things you do. They remember the time you blew a giant green snot bubble out your nose.

One not only drinks the wine, one smells it, observes it, tastes it, sips it and-one talks about it.