Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.

Why don't we have people like Thich Nhat Hanh or Marshall Rosenberg and Nelson Mandela solving violent situations in a peaceful way?

I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.

I'm just as unhappy about San Antonio as I was about Chicago. If you're unhappy about certain things, you're unhappy everywhere.

The house was immaculate, as always, not a stray hair anywhere, not a flake of dandruff or a crumpled towel. Even the roses on the dining-room table held their breath. A kind of airless cleanliness that always made me want to sneeze.

I wanted to write something in a voice that was unique to who I was. And I wanted something that was accessible to the person who works at Dunkin Donuts or who drives a bus, someone who comes home with their feet hurting like my father, someone whos busy and has too many children, like my mother.

I was reading Emily Dickinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson, but these weren't the poets that influenced me. I think Gwendolyn Brooks influenced me because she wrote about Chicago, and she wrote about poor people. And she influenced me in my life by giving me a blurb. I would see her in action, and she listened to every single person. She didn't say, "Oh, I'm tired. I gotta go." She was there, and present, with every single person. She's one of the great teachers.