Imagine Americans who go to Paris. Why would you want to go where someone's going to disparage you? Why would you go anywhere where they treat you bad? Well, that's how it is for us to go to Mexico. You have to be on your guard, because I think the Mexicans are harder on the Mexicans, the Mexican-Americans. They don't see us as Mexican. I think part of it's a class issue and a color issue. We're more connected to their servants, so what are we doing staying at a nice hotel? There's a kind of shame.

My book would come out in one language, then it would come out in another language, then it would come out in One City, One Read, and I was always being called away from my desk.

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.

When your writing is unselfconscious, when it comes from your heart, that's when it's powerful.

You don't want somebody who doesn't know his own heart, do you? You'll find someone who's brave enough to love you. Someday. One day. Not today.

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

I'm learning a lot by reading teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron. They teach me because I feel like I have a responsibility to the communities that I speak to.