Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The idea that America has cornered the market on anti-immigration is ridiculous. It's a global phenomenon.
I act most like myself... when I'm in my hometown, Santo Domingo. I try to get there about five times a year.
Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.
People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.
She's applying her lipstick; I've always believed that the universe invented the color red solely for Latinas.
Every single immigrant we have, undocumented or documented, is a future American. That's just the truth of it.
The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.
If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level any reflection of themselves
But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.
I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.
If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.
This country wants to live in the illusion that it is tolerant but also wants to be able to practice intolerance.
Long before the idea of multiculturalism, in public people could say almost anything to you and get away with it.
For a long time, I let my mother say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her.
You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?
Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.
If you really want a prize, or if you really want applause, you should try to write as many books as humanly possible.
I never wanted to be away from the family. Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.
- Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself. - But your yourself sucks! - It is, lamentably, all I have.
I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.
Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.
We're accepted as long as we conform to what we are expected to be, and I'm sure that's not any different for anyone else.
Genre might certainly increase some of your narrative freedoms, but it also diminishes others. That's the nature of genre.
'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
Of course we all know that's not how life works. The novel that is our life can end at any time. Sometimes even on page one.
The greatest myth of all is what America is. I think that America is such an incredibly dynamic place because of immigration.
In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.
Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.
I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.
I think one of the paradoxes of writing fiction is when people enjoy it, they want it to be real. So they look for connections.
Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own.
I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read.
I think that if you're writing about the human condition, my God, you've got to start at base: point zero, point one, is the body.
You know how it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again
You keep waiting for the heaviness to leave you. You keep waiting for the moment you never think about the ex again. It doesn't come.
My father was a Little League dictator. That really affected me, his control-freakery, his impunity, his arbitrary unreasonable power.
Personally I always feel like I could use a little more of poetry apothegmatic power in my own work but we're always lacking something.
I am a person who dreads any kind of public exposure and any kind of public event. I spend all day, if I have to do a reading, preparing.
Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.
I mean, I'm an artist by nature; no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.
I mean, I’m an artist by nature, no one considers what I do and no one knows who the heck I am, but that anybody does - it is astonishing.
I'm part of the people who are more neutral. I'm just waiting for the dust to settle so that we can turn our guns against the Republicans.
When I became my masked identity I was this incredible little nerd, but in the real world I had to be this tough kid from the neighborhood.
I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that.
I love the kookiness of our speech. Speech is like wonderful magic and poetry in itself. I've always had to crib a lot from what I've heard.
Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing.
She would be a new person, she vowed. They said no matter how far a mule travels it can never come back a horse, but she would show them all.
I discovered early that as an artist there was absolutely nothing wrong with being surrounded by people who were not dedicated to your field.
Beli at thirteen believed in love like a seventy-year-old widow who's been abandoned by family, husband, children and fortune believes in God.
You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.