“Why would we write if we’d already heard what we wanted to hear?”

“There was that word again. Mature. Was this what maturity was? Giving up on the things we wanted because we knew we’d never get them?”

“The truth was that we still spoke Spanish every chance we got. And why, because, simply, it felt good to hear in the sound of the language with which our mothers had rocked us to sleep when we’d been little.”

“The news lies all the time. They tell us what they think we would want to hear.”

“We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, — considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.”

“She was reflecting back on a truth she had learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted.”

“Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.”

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.”

“We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.”

“If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.”