How can you know what you're capable of if you don't embrace the unknown? - Esmeralda Santiago

I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences.

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

I thought, 'I have been through this process before’…When I was 13 years old I came from Puerto Rico to the United States not knowing any English. What I did at that time was I went to the public library, and I would go to the children’s book section where there would be alphabet books and everything would be illustrated. So it was very easy to connect the words to the images. I said, ‘I’m just going to do the same thing. If I did it once before, I can do it again.’