Generally if you're a daughter in a Mexican family, no one wants to tell you anything; they tell you the healthy lies about your family.

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

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

[Courage] always bigger than what you think you can handle, but you're never going to be given something you can't handle. So you say, "Okay, when you tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do, please give me the courage to do it."

Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.

There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.

We started an organization that's the only sub-organization of the MacArthur Foundation and we are called the Macarturos. Usually when I win something, I'm the only one of my ethnicity to get it, but this time I met all these Latinos, and I was so excited. I'd meet someone and I'd go, [...] "Can you come to San Antonio?" And they'd go, "Oh yeah." [...] And suddenly I had twelve people that said they would come. And I didn't know how it was going to be. And that's how the Macarturos became a reality, where these very generous geniuses come to San Antonio and work together.