To this day, on my cheat days from my diet, which are New Year's Eve and my birthday, I buy luxury foods that are very indicative of my class.

I realize that when I moved out of my father’s house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.

The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love.

Mexicans don't think of ghosts as haunting you.

Before you speak, get very quiet, do the meditation, say, "Use me as a channel for what needs to get said to this community. This community needs to hear something very important that I'm the only person in the room who can say it. Please help open me so that I'm not frightened and speak through me. Let me be that channel so that I can help heal." You make yourself so humble that you really are like a flute and that music that comes out comes from el corazón. All the people you're connected to from that light that we call love.

This is the age of fear and so many of us feel afraid to speak out about what has happened to our lives in the wake of 9/11. Television promotes the world as a scary place for the United States and this justifies peeling away every element of privacy we had before. The media is monopolized so we don't even hear a lot of dissent about this new era.

You know, you want to be outrageous when you're young, so all the young people say, "Oooh . . ." Now my tactics are different.