The body is what reminds us on a daily basis that we're human. The body defies us, it betrays us, we have to struggle with it, you know. And it reveals in curious and in abiding ways how we are not perfect.

She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.

This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.

A person doesn't mourn forever.

Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known.

What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number.