The language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.

People like to think of themselves as purists, but there is no such thing as purity, when there exists so much contact.

What you perceive as "liberal" is my independence to choose what i do, with whom, and when. Moreover, it also means that i may choose not to do it, with anyone, ever.

Our goal should be to achieve joy

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.

For things to have value in man's world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man's oldest and most constant commodity is woman.

Once innocence--an all too-brief state of being, if such a one exists--encounters experience, it is transformed. If that transformation is understood, it becomes knowledge. And if that knowledge is employed, then it becomes wisdom.