I never paid attention when people said, "That's gotta be poetry. That's gotta be fiction," except when I was in a graduate program, and you had to claim your genre.

Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now.

If you're poor, potato chips are the food of life for you. It's the caviar.

What do we call our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe in the future, it won't be just Latino, maybe it'll be more multi-multi, because, you know, people are such fusions now, of so many different cultures.

Even if you don't believe in God, you have to believe in love.

My idea was always to start with a small press and then move up to a national press. I had those goals for my career from the time I was a very young woman. I wanted to win a local award, then I wanted a state or national award. Small press, big press. Some women fantasize about their weddings, their husbands, and children. I fantasized about what I wanted to accomplish with my books.

If we were multilingual, imagine how much you would learn about your own culture, about the sensibilities of what's important in your own culture.