Quotes from Luis Alberto Urrea

Came home to find the Sting CDs gone. Odd. He thought she must have taken the boom box into the kitchen to wash the dishes. But the boom box was also gone. He looked in the bedroom - the bed was stripped. He said aloud, "If the tampons are gone, you have left me." The medicine cabinet was bare.

Padre,' Tomás replied, 'my only confession is that I do not believe in confession.

She had learned the greatest trick of the interrogator. Remain silent, and they confessed everything just to fill the chasm of silence.

They couldn't sweat him, no matter what they did. Hey, they were gringos—no way were they going to do the kind of things to him the Mexican cops and the Federales would have done. Every Mexican gangster knows this—Los Yunaites is the land of human rights

Men who do good deeds only wish to atone for their sins.

The People crossed themselves. They knew a Jesus reference when they heard it.

The armored creatures wrestled one another, and when one seemed about to climb out of the basket and make its escape, the others would grab it and haul it back down into the endless battle.

The honeysuckle made the People particularly happy, since it attracted holy hummingbirds, and as long as hummingbirds hovered nearby, things would be all right.

Still. We are both man and woman. My brothers can be tender as mothers with their infants. Women can fight like tigers. Do you see? We are all a mix of each. Power starts when you strike the proper balance. Believe me when I tell you that the woman part of you is the better part. But you are also a man.

They call me Keychain," Neala said. "That's interesting," Little Angel replied. "On account of my teeth's crooked and they say I could open a beer bottle with my mouth, like a can opener." Little Angel stood there for a moment. He felt inexplicable love for these two waifs.

Don't you ever just get tired of religion? Isn't it all just exhausting?" Padre Adriel considered him for a moment. He crossed his arms, then put a finger to his lips. "My friend," he said, "no one is more tired of religion than a priest.

Is she laughing at me?'' Cruz said. Both of his men replied, 'Yes.

Pigeons flocked all about the alpine roofline, moving neurotically from palm trees to mortuary to taquería and back again, frantic that one of them might have found an onion ring that had been overlooked by the others.

Forty-five minutes of embraces and ostentatious arrivals and all the siblings arranging themselves in the front row and the rings of descendants, like shock waves of a meteor strike, radiating back through the room. Paz

I never said that. We'll all be hurt, child. We will all be hurt. What I said was: they shall not overpower you.

The elder members of the family never failed to marvel at the attitude of the kids, how Big Angel was a rolling laugh riot to them, arbiter of bad jokes, spiritual insight, ice cream money, and shelter when they were bounced out of their houses or were let out of jail or rehab or needed to come in off the streets at midnight.

Each of these proud cabrones refusing to apologize for whatever they were mad about. Each one waiting for some sign. And Mama, in the middle, frantic. All she wanted was to see what was left of her family come together, before…Well, before.

The Sinaloans had heard that Sonorans indulged in the unspeakable atrocity of eating flour tortillas. Flour! Any human being knew that tortillas were made of corn.

Big Angel was aware of the sad steps of the dance. It cost him great effort to speak now. When you died, you died in small doses. You had trouble speaking. You forgot who was beside you. You were suddenly furious and in a panic of outrage. You wished you could be saintly. You wished you weren't so weak. You suddenly felt better and fooled yourself into believing that a miracle was about to happen. Well, wasn't that all a dirty rotten thing to pull on somebody.

A border cop confessed: "I have a rule now. If it don't speak English, shoot it.

Dead in Their Tracks by John Annerino

Before Irene was a fiancée, she had set out from Staten Island for Washington, DC, the story went, "to find herself." In a family whose eldest aunt was famous for being the first white woman up the Amazon, there was room for such things.

conservative pundits try to get their constituents to believe the American Taxpayer, that mythical and handy beast, is funding lifesaving towers foisted on them by the lily-livered INS, which, by the way, allowed hijackers to blow up New York.

Minnie said, "Better not to ask." "That's our family in a nutshell." "You got that right.