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.

People know when you're speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That's very powerful.

To me, the Virgen de Guadalupe is just a vessel for me to recognize my own God within myself.

I think of reading as like a medicine cabinet.

Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in

I think one of the great primordial fears we have once we become conscious of our aloneness as children is the fear of losing our mother. We have that from the moment we realize we can lose her just in the supermarket. As a child, it was more terrifying than arithmetic.

One of the things we learned from that panel is the way poor communities use a library is very different from wealthy communities. But the way the library books are measured are by how many books are taken out. And people in poor communities sometimes won't take the book out because they're afraid to. They're afraid of losing it and not being able to replace it.