I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable.

I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.

You don't have to be the specialist on everything. You can try to inform yourself.

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.

What do we call our Harlem Renaissance? Maybe in the future, it won't be just Latino, maybe it'll be more multi-multi, because, you know, people are such fusions now, of so many different cultures.

I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.

To me, the Virgen de Guadalupe is just a vessel for me to recognize my own God within myself.