If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.

When you become a driver, they don't tell you that you have to switch languages. The drivers have their own language and they don't tell you that as girls. How am I supposed to know that blinking light means something? There are all these little languages that you have to know, but you don't know.

People know when you're speaking from el corazón. You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That's very powerful.

Afterwards, people come and say, "I felt like you said that just to me. What you said is something I'm going through right now," so you know that spiritual connection is going on.

The thoughts of letting go of everything I love overwhelms like a tsunami of sorrow.

When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.

I grew up with this kind of grocery store that caters to the poor. They serve you the worst food.