Quotes from Julia Alvarez

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.

Every writer can tell you that a book is only truly alive when it finds passionate readers who bring it alive in their imaginations.

The elasticity of imagination and compassion is what writing and reading promote.

Independence didn't have to be exile.

When we read, even if the characters are tragic or sad or disturbing, these are our brothers and sisters in the human family.

Don't plan it all. Let life surprise you a little.

I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle.

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.

A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.

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?

How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love with the wrong man.

Reading and thoughtfulness and openness are the best way, I should think, to begin to address the richness that is in each of us.

Schools provide safe spaces to talk about controversial issues, and literature presents characters portraying human experience in all its richness and contradictoriness.