Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years.

The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.

Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.

I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

If you're a status quo writer, you're considered to not be political but that's as political as if you're a progressive writer. Some politics are asked to show their passports and others aren't. In the Dominican Republique, if you're slightly progressive, people have a lot of suspicions that you're up to some sort of conspiracy, that this is some sort of plot. On the other hand, if you're conservative and mainstream, people tend to take that as a given and don't notice the politics.

A person doesn't mourn forever.

I think a lot of the most interesting immigrant writing involves stepping outside of that old, dreary binary. Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker is a great example. Same goes for Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior.