In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

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

She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

Books are wonderful, but they aren't that powerful.

We know story collections end when they end, as well - the pages serving as a countdown - but nevertheless the standard story anthology hews closer to what makes being human so hard: it reminds you with each story how quickly everything we are, everything we call our lives can change, can be upended, can disappear. Never to return.

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

There's nothing more true in being a child of a diaspora, a child of immigrants. We're completely new to our parents. We're not something they can ever understand. And it's not as if we are ever going to be accepted. We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.