A grown child is a dangerous thing.

Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

How sad now never to see men holding hands, while everywhere one looks they are holding guns.

You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed. That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.