You want to do movies that your children can watch, and that your children can have fun at and enjoy the experience of shooting.

I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.

No woman has to be a victim of physical abuse. Women have to feel like they are not alone.

Life is tough; and if you have the ability to laugh at it, you have the ability to enjoy it.

I think it's not a femme fatale when someone is not doing it to manipulate men or be like a black widow. She loves him. She does it out of love. She wants him so badly to stay with her.

I proved to myself that if I believe in something and set my mind to it I could actually accomplish it.

I keep waiting to meet a man who has more balls than I do.

Sometimes evolving doesn't mean transforming; sometimes it just means owning what is there.

Life is about creating new opportunities, not waiting for them to come to you.

Your empathy for other mothers is such a natural instinct and it's such a beautiful thing that we all connect, and we should all help each other.

What is important is to believe in something so strongly that you're never discouraged.

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.

Terrorism against our nation will not stand.

I pictured myself as a virus or a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like.

We do not have it out there as a distant dream. This could actually be reality.

Purpose is when you know and understand what you were born to accomplish. Vision is when you see it in your mind and begin to imagine it

You didn’t understand what he was saying, until he kissed you. It was a kiss of such complicity, of such uncomplicated sympathy, that you felt for the first time not alone in your suffering.

The troubles of this world pass, and what we have left is what we have made of our souls.

All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.

To be seen and to be respected for my work and acknowledged as a true American Latina... means a lot to me.