Being a professional woman, I function the best when I don't distinguish between work and play.

I'm a royal pain in the behind.

To realize the American dream, the most important thing to understand is that it belongs to everybody. It's a human dream. If you understand this and work very hard, it is possible.

People look at you and see that you've made it, but sometimes they forget that it took you years of being a human being.

Latin life is rich with warmth, family values and history. I want to bring that beauty into American homes.

How proud I am to be compared to Oprah. I really admire her. She's a minority woman and she's done all this by herself... I'm very happy to be Oprah with salsa and not Donahue in drag.

I have gotten into a lot of trouble in my life for being brutally honest. Sometimes I put both my feet in my mouth. But like Elton John, I'm still standing.

We Latin women are liberated from the neck up, not the neck down.

For me, the American promise isn't just an idea or a theory - it's my life story.

The common denominator all Latinos have is that we want some respect. That's what we're all fighting for.

My hope is to see Tom Cruise jumping on my couch.

Learn from the Sun

My neck is too arthritic to snap around. The big shift in my perspective that happened in the writing process, however, was the paramount importance of the "West" epitomized by Cincinnati.

Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.

I did not write it (Uncle Tom's Cabin). God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.

Authors are ordinary people who usually start to live apart, in the imagination, because they dont fit in with normal, healthy people.

Despite the fact that feminists say they're not getting a fair deal, women are still very powerful.

I think his deepest quality is empathy.

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.