“Erotica is using a feather; pornograpy is using the whole chicken.”

“If what you want is the effect of painting, then paint, Aurora. If what you want is truth, learn to use your camera," he would say again and again”

“At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.”

“Leanne lighted an oil lamp and they continued until the moment came to receive the baby. 'Erzulie, mother loa, help it be born,' Tete prayed aloud. 'Saint Raymond Nonatus, pay attention, do not let an African saint get ahead of you,' Leanne answered in the same tone, and they both burst out laughing.”

“The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing.”

“Me resulta complicado escribir sobre mi vida, porque no sè cuánto recuerdo y cuánto es producto de mi imaginación;la estricta verdad puede ser tediosa y por eso, sin darme ni cuenta, la cambio o la exagero, pero me he propuesto corregir ese defecto y mentir lo menos posible en el futuro.”

“I stopped examining myself in the mirror to compare myself to the perfect beauties of movies and magazines; I decided I was beautiful-- for the simple reason that I wanted to be. And then never gave the matter a second thought. -Eva Luna”