A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.

There is no end to what can be said about the world

Terrence, the Roman slave who freed himself with his writings, once observed, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." That could be the motto of literature!

I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle.

How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love with the wrong man.

Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like.

As a young writer, I was on guard against the Latina in me, the Spanish in me because as far as I could see the models that were presented to me did not include my world. In fact, 'I was told by one teacher in college that one could only write poetry in the language in which one first said Mother. That left me out of American literature, for sure.