Our Land is alive, Esperanza...This whole valley breathes and lives...He picked up a handful of earth and studied it. Did you know that when you lie down on the land, you can feel it breathe? That you can feel its heart beating.

How many others were walking around and not even knowing that someone far away cared for them? Imagine all that love floating in the air, waiting to land on someone's life!

We are like the phoenix," said Abuelita. "Rising again, with a new life ahead of us.

I don't impose any word count or number-of-hours quota on myself, or have any rules, except one: persistence. Nothing glamorous. No epiphanies. Just revisiting and rewriting. For me, momentum is far more important than inspiration.

This is what you learned in college," the narrator tells you early on. "A man desires the satisfaction of his desire; a woman desires the condition of desiring.

A library is a temple unabridged with priceless treasure. Librarians are the majesties who loan the jewels of measure. They welcome to the kingdom the young and old of reapers and reign among the riches as the wondrous fortune keepers.

There is no rose without thorns.