One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much.
Puerto Ricans are many colors - we are Spanish, we're French, we're Thai, Indian, we're almost black, some of us.
It is through art that we will prevail and we will endure. It lives on after us and defines us as people.
I am a naturally buoyant person. I am a naturally energetic person. . . always have been. I have to say that it's important for everyone, but especially for women (given our bone density issues) to walk - even ambling for a couple of miles is better than not walking at all.
When I walk, I try to set a fairly brisk rate. I love walking outside. I hate machines like treadmills. The path that I have chosen to walk is just city streets, but you see pretty houses, trees. . . my routes have some hills in them; it's not just straight walking. You have to exercise your heart and lungs.
My middle name really is perseverance. I've always believed that I had talent, even when I felt like a very inferior sort of person, which I spent a lot of time living my life feeling that I wasn't worthy. But even then I knew that I had something special, and maybe that's what it takes. Maybe people need to have that kind of particular core driving them. But I felt I had talent.
I believe staying young at heart is all in one's personal attitude. . . you can't instill that in anyone.
The doctors advised me not to have even one. My health was still not good, and they said that pregnancy might be fatal. If they hadn't said that to me, maybe I wouldn't have got married. But that diagnosis provoked me, it infuriated me. I answered, 'Why do you think I'm getting married if not to have children? I don't want to hear that I can't have children; I want you to tell me what I have to do in order to have children!'
In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.
The themes Poe used were universal and timeless. As long as the English language exists at all, we will be able to appreciate what he did. It will not age! It will not become dated!
Nobody tells people who are beginners - and I really wish somebody had told this to me - that all of us who do creative work. . . get into it because we have good taste.