“In Juan Aldama, Zacatecas, no one had ever seen a "real" Jew before. Certainly not a living one! They were thought to be mythical like unicorns or gremlins or... La Llorona! Kids would poke and curse me. They would feel the top of my head... to see if I was sprouting horns... like Satan... like the Devil. Didn't they know? I was the new Jesus!”

“One of the things I learned firsthand as a child, growing up in Zacatecas, Mexico was... that when you fight with a pig, you both get dirty,but the pig likes it.”

“One day, as My uncle Antonio was heading out to a cantina, I slipped a story I had written into his shirt pocket. It was story about a little boy who would poke his finger with a needle and make it bleed. The boy did it so he would get some attention from his mother. It worked out great for a while. But one day, his mother came into the boy’s room, lifted up his sheets and found the boy’s cold body. The little boy had bled to death. The next morning, I awoke to find a new black and white speckled composition notebook sitting next to my head....”

“One day, I saw a tiny nopalito (cactus sapling) growing not too far from an old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house in Zacatecas. I told my mom that I would protect it from the wind and that I would water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and strong. My mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's a nopalito, it is it's struggle that makes it so beautiful...”

“Writing about myself (in MI VIDA), has given me a feeling that I had never had before- that the past is like a story, in which one thing led to another, and that life is not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that can be somewhat comprehended. Thinking about writing? You just have to start with one story...”

“My mother would always ask us if anyone wanted to learn how to cook or to sew or to iron clothes. I always ran to her—“Me! Me! Me!” So, my mom would teach me. I secretly feared that I might be condemning myself to a life of sissyhood. One day she said it was good that I learned these things because I was never going to be strong or handsome or smart or popular like my older brother, Jesús. He was “el molde” (the mold) I would never be a good copy of him. She said that I might never find a girlfriend or get married—so it was good that I was learning to take care of myself. It freaked me out. I wanted to be strong, handsome, smart, and popular like my brother, Jesús. I never felt like I was. I was just a bad copy...”

“Down through the dark trees,You can really save me.You're so wonderful, And you're so beautiful.You're like no one on earth,It appears...For all of my life I've been waiting, for you... And I want to be the one,that you take home.Let me be the one, cuz I'm so lonely...Take me home.In time you'll love me like one of your own.Take me home, with you.No one on earth thrills me like you do.Take me home, with you.No one other knows me like you do.I'm going home...”