My mom was a frustrated woman, like so many unhappy women who didn't get the opportunities they wanted.

When you edit, you imagine your enemy is seated on the other side of the table. Your enemy! And your enemy is going to read that with a viciousness, because he knows where you didn't work on it. He's going to shake it and really aim for that jugular. So you are going to polish, and revise, and rewrite, and cut out, and shape it, so that your enemy has no place to grip it. That's how you revise.

What you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do. It's always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle.

It's what's available to the poor communities. They do buy healthy stuff, you know, but the lettuce is usually iceberg lettuce and to get any taste, they have to use all that ranch dressing.

I can't stand it when people say, "If you're writing a novel, you should read this and that." Because it's like giving someone another person's prescription. How do you know that's what they need?

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

Generally if you're a daughter in a Mexican family, no one wants to tell you anything; they tell you the healthy lies about your family.