I learn through listening and watching other performers that are very good, like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.

I've put up with too much, too long, and now I'm just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin.

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 flowers, or bridges.

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

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

'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 ourselves.

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

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.

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

You don't want somebody who doesn't know his own heart, do you? You'll find someone who's brave enough to love you. Someday. One day. Not today.

You will be able to do great things when you know and truly understand that all you really have and can control is your own life. Everything else is second to that.”~ShirLee McGarry~ 06/12/2010

I remember the past, and I learn from it. I rejoice and celebrate in the present, and I re-imagine the future. Now is the moment that never ends.

Everything is as it is at any moment. There's no way of arguing, because you are arguing with reality - the isness of this moment. You can argue with it, but that's suffering.

I think every [fighting] style has the same core. It's all about changing and positioning, transitions.

I'm an atrocious business man, because it's just not the way I think about things. And that's pretty much what all that Grammy/MTV kind of stuff is tied into.

One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

I'm a Taurean, so I'm very passionate and determined and materialistic. Down the years, I've spent a lot of money and saved a bit of money and had a lot of fun.

The slavery of identity comes from our refusal to face ourselves. So we must begin the exploration to self-awareness. Where do we start?

The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.

Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon for those who dislike business on general principles.