"My mom was always my biggest teacher, my inspiration, my role model. My mom was just the most amazing person. She was like a bon vivant in that she just lived each day to the fullest. As soon as I became a vegetarian, she became a vegetarian. … I was actually inspired by a book she was reading that I picked up off the nightstand when I was about 13. It was a Norman Mailer book and it had a very graphic scene of the slaughterhouses in Chicago. So I read that and I said, "I love animals. I don't want to be a part of that system."

"The power of attending to what is spoken, or in other words the power of listening, is one of the most useful habits that we can acquire; it keeps the mind active, and we can thus learn not only by he…"

"One of the most important components of such injunctions of the past that we have blindly carried on and which deserves to be thrown in the dustbins of history is the rigid caste system. This system h…"

"It was a challenge to always be a Latino to Whites, but a Cubano to L.A.’s Chicanos. I was married to a woman for awhile and no one asked about my sexual behavior; but when I came out, it’s often the …"

"My sweet, I do not mean to upset you in writing this, but I want to tell you that within us, as within the nature of every person's soul there is an emptiness and we constantly seek to find that and t…"