[The biggest disappointment is] that he [Barack Obama] deported everybody and their grandmother.

I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.

The people I know who would support [Donald] Trump are keeping their mouths shut.

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

Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own.

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.

She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.