You're Dominican only if you do this, this, and that. And if you do this and that, you'll be accepted to a certain degree and if you don't, people will scorn you for it.

Love is the great test of the human. The human is tested by our ability to withstand love. Love is so difficult, it is so challenging, it demands of us that we wreck it with ourselves. It demands of us an honesty that few of us could sustain.

You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?

I find reading to be a delight, a source of comfort, a way to explore.

Instead of lowering your head and copping to it like a man, you pick up the journal as one might hold a bady's beshattered diaper, as one might pinch a recently benutted condom. You glance at the offending passages. Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her.

She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.