Raquel Cepeda quotes:

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water

While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.

The past is buried deep within the ground in Rabat, although the ancient walls in the old city are still standing, painted in electrifying variations of royal blue that make the winding roads look like streamlets or shallow ocean water.

Are Latino-Americans white? Black? Other? Illegal aliens from Mars? Or are we the very face of America?

Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.

Hip-hop...has been the proverbial key that's opened the door for me to roam this breathtaking planet.

The things that come to us easily, our propensities, are carried on a deep subconscious level into our next life. There are no coincidences.

Support and encouragement are found in the most unlikely places.

Janet Mock's honest and sometimes searing journey is a rare and important look into la vida liminal, one that she manages to negotiate remarkably well, with grace, humor, and fierce grit. Mock doesn't only redefine what realness means to her, but challenges us to rethink our own perceptions of gender and sexuality, feminism and sisterhood, making this book a transcendent piece of American literature.

Even the juncture in history and the zeitgeist we live in is something we choose, setting the scene for the spiritual fodder we need to grow and achieve deeper elevation of our souls.

The Dominican Republic is my holy land, my Mecca.

The hospital room was as cold as dead skin, the hallway crowded with lost souls and reeking of illness.

...being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.

I remember feeling that pieces of me were scattered around the world; I belonged to her, Mother Earth.

When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.

To me, travel is more valuable than any stupid piece of bling money can buy

Being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.

Come to think of it, maybe God is a He after all, because only a cruel force would create something this beautiful and make it inaccessible to most people

For some, excavating the past isn't an adventure, it's more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound.

Our identities are as fluid as our personal experiences are diverse.

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder.

The tension between people is palpable, and the ideal of what it means to be and look American becomes a preoccupation to folks around the country, including me.

The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.

Nobody, she felt, understood her--not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie--except her man.

Come to think of it, maybe God is a He after all, because only a cruel force would create something this beautiful and make it inaccessible to most people.

I have never bought into the idea that blood is thicker than water. Love and respect are meant to be earned from our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.

Foisting an identity on people rather than allowing them the freedom and space to create their own is shady.

This is what I know about my parents. They spent the next several years trying to forget each other, and me.

To me, travel is more valuable than any stupid piece of bling money can buy.

A mother isn't the person who births you; it's the person who rears you and shows you love.

Globalization by the way of McDonald's and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here.

I wish she'd said something different, but patriarchy is as prevalent around the world as racism and xenophobia are. We can't hide from it, not even here.

If Aphrodite chills at home in Cyprus for most of the year, then Fez must be the goddess's playground

Lately, Mami's eyes have been so dark, I don't like looking into them because I'm afraid I'll fall in.

Nobody, she felt, understood her-not her mother, not her father, not her sister or brother, none of the girls or boys at school, nadie - except her man.

Paradise is a state of being, more than just the name of a suburb or a home.

Shakespeare had it right all along: Love will kill you in the end.

There are things in our blood that are just naturally passed down to us, whether we want to recognize them or not.

This thing I am feeling, I'm almost certain, is the closest I'll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.

We aren't encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

We travel with the same clan over and over again, from one life to the next, until some ultimate purpose is fulfilled and we no longer need to return.

Women destroy me. I allow them to.