If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves

Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.

I prefer the 1950s where people were like, "I'm a white supremacist, and that's who I am." Now people want to burn a cross on your lawn and call themselves not racists.

...and when he thought about the way she laughed, as though she owned the air around her, his heart thundered inside his chest, a lonely rada.

Now people like Susan Sarandon are noticing that people of color live this way?! This is the way I've always lived! What's happened is that it has now reached a level of national discourse where it's on the table. But they've never minded that we were treated like this off-stage.

Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them.

I think that if you're writing about the human condition, my God, you've got to start at base: point zero, point one, is the body.