For me it's a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe.

Migration gives a blank cheque to put anything you don't feel like addressing in the memory hold. No neighbours can go against the monster narrative of your family.

I don't think you can be from the Caribbean and not know a certain amount about the apocalypse.

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.

Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.

She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.

If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves

We get these lives for free. I didn't do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it's an extraordinary bargain.

Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done.

I think the average guy thinks they're pro-woman, just because they think they're a nice guy and someone has told them that they're awesome. But the truth is far from it.

[Donald] Trump is taking America's dirty laundry to the center stage. Everything he does, the rest of the country already does really well: victimize immigrants, poor people, women.

Without music, life would be a blank to me.

Lincoln matured best in sorrow.

Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.

Repeat anything often enough and it will start to become you.

She seemed like a creature made to attract everyone and express nothing real, though it would take a master observer, like Magnus, to know it.

The myths have always condemned those who 'looked back.' Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.

My dad used to have to open the second bottle of wine in the loo in case Mum heard the cork coming out.

It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.

The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life.

There is no question that women helping women works for women.