I realize that when I moved out of my father’s house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.

Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. When you're thinking of your listener, that's when you start stuttering and it's just because you're nervous that your listener is passing judgment.

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

When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.

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.

The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.

I think the erotic is very spiritual, and I never see that spiritual dimension when you look at collections of erotica. That's always missing for me.