I'm part of the people who are more neutral. I'm just waiting for the dust to settle so that we can turn our guns against the Republicans.

People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong. I guess the best way of saying it is that no one could have survived what we survived - whether it was first extermination and slavery, then abandonment and erasure, then the series of gunboat two-bit dictatorships, followed by the final apotheosis of dictatorships, the Trujillato. You couldn't survive it without the resistance of this kind of woman.

Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.

If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.

You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, over a gesture

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

I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'