Quotes from Luis Alberto Urrea

Julian wore his favorite good-luck red-striped soccer jersey. He was planning to make money to build cement walls for his mother's house. He was recently married, and he and his wife were expecting a child that October. His father said Julian had promised to "always behave with respect," and that he would do nothing to cost his father his feelings of pride. He had a note from his bridge in his pocket.

Better a gringo than a dead man," the lieutenant sighed, smoke escaping his nostrils. "Barely! But, yes, hell yes.

Brown birds lined up on telephone wires like beads on a cheap Tijuana necklace.

You are always in a universe of choices. Any moment of your life can go in any direction you choose.

We spend our lives walking into our own mirrors. All we see is ourselves as we walk down the road.

Lately," said Hubbard, "I have been considering language to be the enemy.

Okay," he said, informing the universe he was ready for decisive action.

To be macho, you must already know everything, know it so well that you're already bored by the knowledge.

Wildflowers after rain the heart breaks open and little bright seeds fall out.

They signed in as Mr. P. Villa and Mrs. S. Hayek.

He hadn't enjoyed school all that much, but they could have warned him that language would prove overtaxing.

put aside hatred and take up love" (356)

Ina the Viking was out in her potato patch waving at him like some idiot. Some people thought life was just the spiffiest thing that ever happened.

wonder, if we in the U.S. stopped buying cocaine and stopped selling heavy weapons across the border, what would happen then? So easy to talk about them. What does it mean when they are also us?

Everybody loves Jesus Christ, they just don't know what to do with Jesus Garcia.

Museums suck," said Billy. The bus rattled along between tan fields. "Right?" said Charlie. "History," said Higgins. "Shit like that.

If you were born to be a flood, you cannot insult Heaven by insisting you are a drought.

the first sections of the Border Fence went up in San Diego sector—the contractor used undocumented workers to build it.

Mexican right-wing talk radio wants a fence built on their southern border to keep out those damned Hondurans and Salvadorans and Guatemalans. I heard a radio host in Guadalajara decry these "aliens." It seems Hondurans want to take Mexican jobs. Want to steal health care, get an education. They don't share the proper language, and they carry disease and lower the standard of living and want to steal social security benefits. Rushito Limbortinez in the house!

Slowly, both the vaguely ironic and the deeply sincere among them came to see how seriously the Red Cross and the army took this service. And they started to take it seriously, too. They didn't feel like cooks, didn't feel like waitresses. Ellie said they were ass-kicking bitches, and they knew that they were. Though Irene said: "I was thinking of Amazons." Ellie and Dorothy stared at her—she made a soft little muscle—and laughed.

Audiences for ten years have been startled to learn that the federal law that makes these humans illegal isn't even on the criminal books. You can look it up for yourself, since no TV or radio host is going to waste a segment explaining the actual law to you. Right or left. Felony? Nope. Misdemeanor? Sorry, but no.

These are your sisters and the GIs are your brothers and we expect you to treat them as such. Win this war with your decency. Because we are Americans. And this is what Americans do.

Is it a crime to want to be good? she cried

Bees are excellent engineers, better than even you. They are are hard workers...They are as brave as Indian warriors. And they make honey. Far better than humans, my friend.