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.

I think I didn't know what I was creating, as much as I knew what I didn't want to do. And I didn't want my mother's life. She was an unhappy, frustrated artist who always dreamed of a life that was never going to be hers.

Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you.

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

If you start thinking about who's going to read it [you're writing], or what grade will you get, or is it going to win that award, or are you going to get into this graduate program, you're blocking the light, and the light is that guidance and love we get when we open up our hearts and are guided by our higher selves, or God, or the Buddha Lupe [Buddha and the Virgin of Guadalupe fused together, as they are in the tattoo on Sandra's right arm], or whatever you believe in, or love.

Spanish is a poetic language, in particular the Spanish of Mexico which has a wonderful animistic attitude you might not see in the Spanish of the peninsula. I think it has to do with the indigenous way of looking at nature.

I think people should read fairy tales, because were hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.