I was born in Mexico, I grew up in Mexico, and along the way, I learned to love Mexico. I think anyone who has stepped foot on this land - not to mention all Mexican people - will agree that it's not difficult to love Mexico.
The fact is that at different stages of your life, and under the influence of different inspirations, you write different things. The point is not necessarily to find your voice, which grinds out the same sort of thing again and again, but to find a vehicle for people who are far more important than the author: the characters.
And in fact, I think one of the best guides to telling you who you are, and I think children use it all the time for this purpose, is fantasy.
I have to remind the people who put down East Coast surfing that Kelly Slater is from Florida.
I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.
I saw many people who had advanced heart disease and I was so frustrated because I knew if they just knew how to do the right thing, simple lifestyle and diet steps, that the entire trajectory of their life and health would have been different.
The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.
The final ballots represent players, managers, executives and builders who are top-tier candidates and worthy of review for consideration for election to the Hall of Fame.
After every massacre in a school, Americans grasp at quick cures. 'Let's install metal detectors and give guns to teachers' Let's crack down on troublemakers, weeding out kids who fit the profile of a gunman. Let's buy bulletproof whiteboards for the students to scurry behind, or train kids to throw erasers or cans of soup at an attacker.'
We've always been fascinated with movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new.
There's not a person in the United States of America who doesn't love country or have some kind of tie to it.
Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.
There's so many politicians who have given politics a pretty poor name... their actions have been demonstrated to be part of their over-enthusiasm to get reelected.
Anyone who lives within his means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.
The best performers in Europe are those who use their welfare states to help people adjust to change.
It's easy for me to go back to being a kid. You know how kids can be like savages before they get civilized? There's that sadist quality. Y'know, like boys who like to pick apart an insect for the sake of it.
I'd read the book and liked the book, but it made me really uncomfortable trying to picture myself in this part. Here's this guy who seems to be the embodiment of every single perfect guy.
There's a lot of people who don't want anything from me but to laugh and have a good time. You see them at the show and they like - they dress up to come see your show and stuff. And they pack these auditoriums and it's a lot of fun, man. It's like, this is how I started, and it's still fun for me.
Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.
I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.
The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.
You need to accept yourself for who you are and surround yourself with a good group of girl friends that'll lift you up instead of put you down.
I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
I would like to thank the people who encouraged me to draw army cartoons at a time when the gag man's conception of the army was one of mean ole sergeants and jeeps which jump over mountains.
I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game.
An actress who has the gift of swaying the emotions of an audience, of compelling tribute of tears, or of moving the public to joyous merriment, cannot always be satisfied to set aside her whole career, in the work that she loves, simply because she is married.
No matter who I meet, I won't have any pressure.
The crew members for 'The Price Is Right' at night are the same guys who work 'Y&R' during the day. It's even in the same studio. I've been in the place for 15 years. So all the faces at 'The Price Is Right' are familiar.
In the nineties, it was common to see people who expressed themselves through one designer - the Jil Sander woman, the Martin Margiela woman. You saw her on the street, and you knew who she was.
In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married - we became an interracial couple.
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
What was really funny is that as I got older all those guys who called me a sissy in junior high school wanted me to be their best friend because they wanted to meet all the girls that I knew in figure skating.
