I'm filled with a new joy mixed with old grief.

If we got an educational program going, we could tell people, "Instead of butter, use avocado." That's something we eat, it has the good fat, and it has a good texture, and it tastes better. Just imagine if you substituted that. Or if we switched to olive oil, the extra virgin olive oil, we could still have our taquitos, but put a little oil on them and put them in the oven and bake them.

I think the erotic is very spiritual, and I never see that spiritual dimension when you look at collections of erotica. That's always missing for me.

You know how they say, "Find your voice"? That's your voice, in your pajamas. And it doesn't mean that you're going to publish it or print it or people are going to see you in your pajamas. It just means you are going to construct the foundation in your pajamas, in that voice.

Every book takes you to the terror, that terrible place of possible failure.

There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world.

Sometimes hearing the stories is going to change people's lives much more than if they read it.