Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. 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.

We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.

Though we tremble before uncertain futures may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength may we dance in the face of our fears.

Nothing happens in the 'real' world unless it first happens in the images in our heads

To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads.

I had to leave home so I could find myself, find my own intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on me.

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