“Was Paco in here?”

“Paco, we are all so much more than our faults, aren’t we?”

“Paco Fuentes, " Mrs. Peterson says, pointing to the table behind Mary. The handsome young man with pale blue eyes like his mother's and smoky black hair like his father's takes his assigned seat.”

“The boy Paco had never known about any of this nor about what all these people would be doing on the next day and on other days to come. He had no idea how they really lived nor how they ended. He did not even realize they ended.”

“I pulled the dress out of the bag and held it in front of me. Ella sat up straighter and squinted her eyes, while Michael and Paco made the noises men make when a woman says, “What do you think?” Fathers probably teach those noises to their sons when they’re young—“Stand up when you’re introduced to a lady, use your napkin instead of your sleeve, and make admiring noises when a woman shows you anything, no matter what it is, and asks you what you think about it. Never, never, never say you have no opinion.”

“Writers are not here to conform. We are here to challenge. We're not here to be comfortable—we're here, really, to shake things up. That's our job.”