If you live in poor neighborhoods - I know from living in several poor neighborhoods - the worst supermarkets in the city are in the poorest neighborhoods, where people don't have cars.

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.

For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty?

Emily wondered whether Artie would be so carefree if he knew The Book Club was performing grand theft imagination.

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

Gwen Stefani's style and flow I just love. She is so cool to me!

The sinews of war are five - men, money, materials, maintenance (food) and morale.

The object of power is power.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

It was nice standing out in the darkness, in the damp grass, with spring coming on and a feeling in my heart of imminent disaster.

I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer."