There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.

The writer Denise Chávez comments on poor food and what you associate with luxury food items. In fact, she wrote a whole book called A Taco Testimony, and though the title sounds light, it's a heavy book. It's about being working class and what kind of food is available to you that's cheap.

I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet.

Think about the books that you were reading at a certain crisis in your life, what you were reading, and that's because you needed them to nourish your alma.

Mice and any rodentia. Guinea pigs. Even rabbits, I can't stand. Rabbits are cousins to rats. It's a class thing. If you had to grow up with rats scampering in your backyard, because the city services were cut in half and the population in your neighborhood doubled, then that also is going to mean that the flora and fauna are going to grow as well. So that's a part of it. That's why I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping.

The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn't feel like anything is private anymore.

The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.