1. “How we lie to ourselves when we’ve fallen in love with the wrong man.” – Julia Alvarez
2. “Every writer can tell you that a book is only truly alive when it finds passionate readers who bring it alive in their imaginations.” – Julia Alvarez
3. “It’s like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I’m stitching the scraps back together.” – Julia Alvarez
4. “Independence didn’t have to be exile.” – Julia Alvarez
5. “The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.” – Julia Alvarez
6. “It doesn’t make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn’t we trust them instead of being afraid of them?” – Julia Alvarez
7. “There is no end to what can be said about the world” – Julia Alvarez
8. “The elasticity of imagination and compassion is what writing and reading promote.” – Julia Alvarez
9. “Don’t plan it all. Let life surprise you a little.” – Julia Alvarez
10. “Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us.” – Julia Alvarez
11. “It’s like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I’m stitching the scraps back together.” – Julia Alvarez
12. “I grew up in a dictatorship, where you couldn’t talk about difficult situations – there was this culture of silence. We would run into a problem and have no one to talk to.” – Julia Alvarez
13. “Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.” – Julia Alvarez
14. “I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle.” – Julia Alvarez
15. “A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.” – Julia Alvarez
16. “It’s always gratifying to hear from a passionate reader, and as a longtime educator, I’m especially pleased and heartened when that reader is a young student who is inspired to write me and let me know that my book has helped him or her find her way.” – Julia Alvarez
17. “A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.” – Julia Alvarez
18. “What, if anything, does it mean? An afterlife? All she has come up with is that the only way not to let the people she loves die forever is to embody what she loved about them. Otherwise the world is indeed depleted.” – Julia Alvarez
19. “Each of us will have to make the choices that allow us to be the largest versions of ourselves.” – Julia Alvarez
20. “I think it is important to know how to teach new material to help young people grow and learn.” – Julia Alvarez
21. “Everyone needs a strong sense of self. It is our base of operations for everything that we do in life.” – Julia Alvarez
22. “But even the beauties of language, of words rightly chosen, are riddled with who we are, class and race, and whatever else will keep up – so we think – safe on the narrow path.” – Julia Alvarez
23. “Depression is always in the details.” – Julia Alvarez
24. “When we read, even if the characters are tragic or sad or disturbing, these are our brothers and sisters in the human family.” – Julia Alvarez
25. “Schools provide safe spaces to talk about controversial issues, and literature presents characters portraying human experience in all its richness and contradictoriness.” – Julia Alvarez
26. “As if poetry can’t survive in such impoverished conditions. In fact, poetry (and honor) might be all you have.” – Julia Alvarez
27. “But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn’t begin when you sit down to write. It’s a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.” – Julia Alvarez
28. “Reading is a way to take in the difficult situations and understand them. The whole point of reading a book in class is to have discussion about what these situations are like.” – Julia Alvarez
29. “There is no end to what can be said about the world” – Julia Alvarez