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.

Know that in this world there's somebody who will always love you.

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

I think men spend so much time passing for being men.

Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with—he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he'd jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.