Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.

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.

Every morning, look in the mirror and affirm positive words into your life.

There's nothing an economist should fear so much as applause.

Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I've been with all along, that's where I really learn.

Never be afraid to tread the path alone. Know which is your path and follow it wherever it may lead you; do not feel you have to follow in someone else's footsteps.

You can manage your sin, but that's not repentance.

The darkest hour in any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.

For whoever meditates a crime is guilty of the deed.

Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.

The best poet is the man who delivers our daily bread: the local baker.

I think people who love each other and live together and have children together need to agree on the things that are most important in life.