You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it? There are many formulas. One year for every year you dated. Two years for every year you dated. It’s just a matter of will power: The day you decide it’s over, it’s over. You never get over it.
Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn’t do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel.
I couldn’t help it. I tried to keep it down but it just flooded through all my quiet spaces. It was a message more than a feeling, a message that tolled like a bell: change, change, change.
But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.
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.
Stereotypes, they’re sensual, cultural weapons. That’s the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing.
The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.
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.
In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
In fact, looking at the darkest sides of the United States has only made me appreciate the things that we do right, the things that we do beautifully. We are, for all of our mistakes and all of our crimes, a remarkable place.
Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.
I’m like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.
I think the average guy thinks they’re pro-woman, just because they think they’re a nice guy and someone has told them that they’re awesome. But the truth is far from it.
People can say what they want, but historically, feminism in the Dominican Republic has been extremely strong.
You can’t regret the life you didn’t lead.
As expected: she, the daughter of the Fall, recipient of its heaviest radiation, loved atomically.
We get these lives for free. I didn’t do anything to get this life, and no matter what the hardships are, it is free and, in a way, it’s an extraordinary bargain.
Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.
I never hear white writers get asked, ‘Do you worry about how you represent white people?’