When I was a child, I was very shy, and there's still a part of me that's very shy.

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.

One thing you cannot avoid ever in life, and that is time.

Love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.

Words come alive from a page or script because both the writer and actor were brave enough to neither deny or invent their truth

Real humility is graceful power, not a mandate to be victimized and abused.

We are always immeasurably bigger than the little person we’ve too often doomed ourselves to be.

The saddest thing about any man is that he be ignorant, and the most exciting thing is that he knows.

Bill Cunningham he knows fashion better than anybody.

When you're acting you put so much of yourself into working. As much fun as it is, it's still hard work and it's still a challenge.

It is hard to repent, to admit you are wrong on faith alone before the evidence of a feeling of being forgiven and light comes.

Bigots see something they expect and then they stop thinking about what is in front of them. It's probably how they got to be bigots in the first place.