People like to blame Mexican food, but look at what's happening globally, look at all the fast foods and products filled with trans fat. Before the Mexican Revolution, a hundred years ago, people were eating what now macrobiotics tells us to eat, corn, black beans, rice. That's what people were eating - and chile peppers. That's a healthy diet.

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.

Even if you're an agnostic or an atheist, you can create an altar, because an altar is simply paying homage to someone's life and celebrating what they did.

When I'm starting to feel, "How many more people are there?" I go slower. I ask questions, and that person engaging with me gives me energy.

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've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

I think that you need to have books that talk about the lives of the poor, and they need to be involved - involved in acquisitions.