Coming from a traditional Puerto Rican family, I wasn't allowed to express my displeasure at or disagreement with my parents' point of view in any me… - Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa

If you aren't willing to fight for your work, no one else will either. If you feel you have an important story to tell, you have to be willing to go to the wall for it. That said, no one is perfect or infallible. All writers, no matter how successful, have much to learn. The day we believe we have nothing more to learn is the day we start stagnating. It's important to find people who understand your universe and support your vision. It's important to keep honing your craft, keep growing with the changing times. It is as important to listen as it is to raise your voice.

We all carry our nightmares in unspoken places. The details are different, but the outcome is the same. They want to steal our humanity, to ease the weight into their own souls. Don't you let them. Don't give them one piece of you they can't take. Don't you become the empty vessel they want to believe you are.

From the time she walked away from the tortured captives, she never has a moment that is not recorded in the book of their collective memory. Their wrath lives in the atmosphere like the charged air before a hurricane. (chapter 17, p230)