"A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart."
— Julia Alvarez (In the Time of Butterflies)

"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. "
— Julia Alvarez (Antes de ser libres)

"I suppose only an almighty God can see all of our differing stories. Only He can love each narrow, aggrieved, and petty self and applaud each time one of us, inflamed by love or enlarged by loss, manages to see briefly beyond the confines of our own self-interest into another's being."
— Julia Alvarez

"I keep mentioning the girls. I have to admit the more time I spend with them, the less I care what they've done or where they come from. What matters is the quality of a person. What someone is inside themselves. (In the Time of the Butterflies)"
— Julia Alvarez

"As she was being marched down the hall, a voice from one of the cells called out, Mariposa does not belong to herself alone. She belongs to Quisqueya! Then everyone was beating on the bars calling out, Viva La Mariposa! Tears came to my eyes. Something big and powerful spread its wings inside me. Courage, I told myself. And this time, I felt it. "
— Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies)

"Sometimes, it's totally confusing to be me! Only writing in my diary helps me feel a little less crazy."
— Julia Alvarez (Before We Were Free)

"All the heart wants is to be called again."
— Julia Alvarez (In the Name of Salome)

"Again, it is that time of afternoon when even in happy periods of her life, Alma often feels a heaviness of heart."
— Julia Alvarez (Saving the World)

"...as if this were a secret we shared, this understanding that we were here on this earth for a nobler purpose than to be feverish little clods full of ailments and grievances....His words reminded me of what I had forgotten, dulled by habit, preoccupied by the dark flock of my own sorrows.
Isabel pg 37
"
— Julia Alvarez (Saving the World)

"No suffering lasts a century, nor a body that can withstand it, as the saying goes."
— Julia Alvarez

"She has been too frightened to carry out any strategy, but now a road is opening up before her. "
— Julia Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents)

"I want my children to be free, no matter what. Promise me you'll spread your wingsand fly."
— Julia Alvarez

"You can't be brave if you're not scarred."
— Julia Alvarez (Before We Were Free)

"After all, as Chucha herself would say, what good is it to escape captivity only to be imprisoned in you own misery. "
— Julia Alvarez (Before We Were Free)