Women Are Not Roses Women have no beginning only continual flows. Though rivers flow women are not rivers. Women are not roses they are not oceans or stars. i would like to tell her this but i think she already knows.

I was just, like, not at all the office type; I was the artist type.

Poverty has its advantages. When you're that poor what would you have that anyone would want? Except your peace of mind. Your dignity. Your heart. The important things.

Many European countries are fascinated with minorities from the United States. They still see this country as a world power and they covet that power...I was approached by a professor once at the Sorbonne in Paris and asked about racism in this country, and when I reflected on racism on the streets of Paris - you know, I'd be considered an Arab there -well, she didn't want to address that...It just goes to show it was easier for Europeans to study racism in the United States than it is from within the belly of the beast.

There’s something insupportable about being pissed with the one person on this planet that sends your adrenaline flowing to remind you that you’re alive. It’s almost like we’re mad because we’ve been shocked out of our usual comatose state of being by feeling something for someone, for ourselves, for just a moment.

The writers who have been serious about recreating American literature have always been far and few between. What we do have at the end of the 20th century that we didn't have at the beginning, at that time of the Lost Generation of rich white boys, is a mixture. We're now getting gay writers of color, let's say, and women of color being published. This is unprecedented.

Mexico. Melancholy, profoundly right and wrong, it embraces as it strangulates.