Look, I think Hispanic community - the values that...

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

I think the Hispanic community, the values that resonate in our community, are fundamentally conservative. They are faith, family, patriotism.

I think Hispanic community - the values that resonate in our community are fundamentally conservative. They are faith, family and patriotism. Do you know the rate of military enlistment among Hispanics is higher than any demographic in this country? And they are also hard work and responsibility.

I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.

Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.

1 month ago the American people stopped to remember the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. We thought first and foremost of the selflessness, patriotism and heroism by our troops, our National Guard and Reserves.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.