if you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity.

People think [immigration] is only about the dollar, but it's so much more complex. This is a place where you can reinvent yourself. I don't know that you can do that anywhere else.

We're always going to have prejudices ... I don't think we can change society. You can only change individual by individual. And you can change yourself.

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times.