The world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning..

The most powerful speaking you can do is the speaking that comes from your heart and your love..

If you know two cultures and two languages, that intermediate place, where the two don't perfectly meet, is really interesting..

You were given that pain and that vision because you have something to do with it..

I have to say that the traditional role is kind of a myth. I think the traditional Mexican woman is a fierce woman..

Books are medicine and you have to take the right medicine that you need at that moment or that day or that time in your life..

Maybe all pain in the world requires poetry..

Once you can open yourself to joy, you feel as if you've transformed your sadness into illumination, which is really all that art is. All we want to ….

I'm not afraid to say what I'm afraid of. Does that make me fearless?.

The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say..

I'm a witch woman--high on tobacco and holy water. I'm a woman delighted with her disasters. They give me something to do. A profession of sorts...I ….

We need to write because so many of our stories are not being heard. Where could they be heard in this era of fear and media monopolies? Writing allo….

I tell people to write the stories that you're afraid to talk about, the stories you wish you'd forget, because those have the most power. Those are ….

Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within..

The beauty of literature is you allow readers to see things through other peoples eyes. All good books do this..

I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power..

My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flower….

It takes a long time for women to feel it's alright to be chingona. To aspire to be a chingona!...You are saying, 'This is my camino, this is my path….

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..

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ou….

You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are..