Jimmy Santiago Baca Quotes

People say what distinguishes us from the animals is that we think. Well, then why the hell don't we extend some compassion to those under tremendous duress? There's this whole idea that you work really hard so you can deaden your soul to the universe and enjoy yourself only in ways the Sierra Club will let you. But what about enjoying yourself by getting into the whole melee of poverty and racism and violence and murder and drug addiction? Get in there, roll up your sleeves, and do something! Nobody does it.

You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too.

Being a human being without forgiveness is like being a guitarist without fingers or being the diva without a tongue.

Make this day a tree
leaning over the river eternity
and fuss about in its branches.

We're all self-destructive when we're young. We all rebel. If we don't, there's something wrong. But when a Chicano kid's in a rebellious state, he has nowhere to go but to put himself in jeopardy with the police. When a kid who has some class privilege rebels, he's in a beautiful room and he can buy these horrible CDs and drugs. He's buffered from being a criminal.

I can't stand the comfort zone. So many people I know, their parents give them their homes, and they get married and have children, or whatever. That's it. They don't ever go beyond that. That's not what life is.

Understanding is the key to everything. To rage, fear, love. If you understand a situation, it's going to make you mad. Or it's going to make you feel fearful. If any of us even had a clue as to what Bush and those people were up to, we'd be running stark crazy mad out of fear.

Every poem is an infant labored into birth and I am drenched with sweating effort, tired from the pain and hurt of being a man, in the poem I transform myself into a woman.

One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a world that's so far from what the Palestinian children are going through, it's unbelievable. Yet if we dare to get close to that atrocity and name it, it would shock us so badly we couldn't live in our privileged comfort zone.

I am a face in a trance, evoking duende. My face imbues breath and stuns you with star-spirit. I am grove-face, story-teller face, and dawn-bringer face. A face as common as carrots and celery, called upon as a father to be cook, waiter, servant, and maid.

I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to get in there and not accept the constant failure of prisons to deal with racism, lack of privilege, and impoverishment - not accept any of that. Just get in there!

I am learning to look at myself differently, to see the scattered remnants of hope and dreams and collect them again.

Americans would have a right to go to war with the Iraqis if we could name one author from Iraq. It disturbs me that we're going to war with somebody we know absolutely nothing about. Name one Iraqi poet, one Iraqi woman activist, one Iraqi singer. Name one Iraqi novelist. You can't. And how can you go kill someone you don't know anything about?