"We're all complicated, and we all make mistakes, and we all love each other. I like getting at that sort of very realistic aspect of the human experience, which is that sort of complicated nature of everybody."

"I was a reluctant memoir writer and I had to decide what felt more important: keeping the stories to myself or perhaps making a dent in the stereotypes that people have about women's experiences on active duty."

"...The power of creativity is to change our imagination of a thing, and therefore imagine that further steps could be possible."

"I believe in nature felt but never apprehended, I travel through and investigate multiple worlds from a perspective of being both whole and un-whole."

"What’s my place, and how can I use my position to help imagine a better world with more humanity and love?"

"I'm in all times at all times. I'm both in Mesoamerican times – as someone who practices Aztec dance, and has a belief system built with syncretism, and also as a professor of Chicanx Studies is like taking apart Mexican identity via Mexican nationalism, and a child of the 80s as a queer person, and someone who worked grew up working class who loves things that have existed for a long time, and who likes to reuse them."

"I find the process of constructing language to be necessary and brutal."

"Suffering is non-negotiable, and I am grateful for how poem-making helps me live with and through what is painful and cherish what is joyful. With all of this in mind, I aim to craft poems that have blood in them, that give something to the reader."