If you start thinking about who's going to read it [you're writing], or what grade will you get, or is it going to win that award, or are you going to get into this graduate program, you're blocking the light, and the light is that guidance and love we get when we open up our hearts and are guided by our higher selves, or God, or the Buddha Lupe [Buddha and the Virgin of Guadalupe fused together, as they are in the tattoo on Sandra's right arm], or whatever you believe in, or love.

I have this great fear of Mexico City. I won't go to Mexico City unless someone meets me at the airport and is with me. I just feel very vulnerable there.

I know the books that I need to help me to be wiser than my years and be kinder and more compassionate and more patient than I really am.

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

"You're next, after the feather dancers." And you had to get their attention, because otherwise people would go, "Oh, a poet." You really have to learn.

I think no matter what you do you can't please everybody. You have to ask yourself, "Did I do what I set out to do?"

The border between the dead and the living, if you're Mexican, doesn't exist. The dead are part of your life.