Quotes from Angie Cruz

in our lifetimes we have so much to survive.

Think of your Tía Clara—her daughter married a man who works in New York, and every month he sends the family money. He never fails. They have a cement floor and a new bathroom.

How many women get to choose who to marry and can truly dictate their own life? As God is my witness, my daughter will have choices.

Nobody needed to know what happened between us. It felt good to keep it private. Like praying. You don't have to announce that you pray. I don't need no one to make me feel bad about it. José was the antídoto to some of the most poisonous years of my life. He filled the emptiness of my apartment.

I remember back to a time when I could walk on the beach without a pass from a hotel. When I was too young to fear getting raped, or hurt or lost.

did it because I wanted to change my life. That's what we have to do. We step in the shit on purpose so we're forced to buy new shoes.

If you're lucky, you find a man that you don't fall in the hole with.

Everybody cannot be calm. To be calm is a luxury!

When you fall in love, you have to play it out even if everyone calls you crazy. That's why they call it falling. We have no control over it.

Lulú talks and talks because she dique knows everything. But when I say something, people listen. This I learned from my father. The less you say, the more the people listen.

Leave wreckage by the roadside. Burn all decayed tissue. Tightrope from which we emerge. —DAWN LUNDY MARTIN, GOOD STOCK STRANGE BLOOD

If a person seems inflexible, yield, then slip in sideways and get what you want.

I don't care if I die right there. I want him to thrust inside of me forever. Let this be our last day. Let us die right here.

I look at my feet. I hold back my tears, slump my shoulders, and retreat just enough to show deference. I have learned a lot from growing up with animals.

Love, love, love. What good is it, if it can't put food on the table.

Men can only perform like men, mama always says, when women are doing everything. We're invisible little workers so they can puff out their chests.