These my two hands / quick to slap my face / before others could slap it.

The U.S.-Mexican border es un herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture.

I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.

Do work that matters. Vale la pena

Depression is useful. It signals that you need to make changes in your life, it challenges your tendency to withdraw, it reminds you to take action.

the world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.

The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy.