“going back and forth, back and forth, getting nowhere”

“I was the first Chicano to write in complete sentences.”

“The black asphalt wouls shimmer with vapors I had a theory about those vapors...not released by the sun but by a huge onion buried under the city. This onion made us cry... I thought about the giant onion, that remarkable bulb of sadness.”

“It appears these days I don't have much of a life because my nose is often stuck in a book. But I discovered that reading builds a life inside the mind.”

“Because nothing should be wastedIn a world where sparrows work hardTo prove there is enough.”

“Things seemed to go back and forth between reality and imagination--except that it was all reality.”

“That was how I was going to get things back to normal—by working. I never thought I would use the words “working” and “normal” in the same sentence, but I’ll try anything to avoid facing reality.”