We women shouldn't get our driver's licenses till real late in life.

I was raised in Chicago, so always used Latina. It's what my Father and brothers called ourselves, when we meant the entire Spanish-speaking community of Chicago.

If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting.

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.

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.

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. I don't like to go into subways, because I always see them. Rats are like my naguales [kindred animal spirits]. They follow me.