Quotes from Luis Alberto Urrea

In fact, the towers are built, raised, maintained, and paid for out-of-pocket by those bleeding-heart liberals, the Border Patrol agents themselves.

He was nearly erased by all the tragedy falling upon him. His Mamá had still ironed his shirts until she was taken ill. Everything on Earth was filled with sorrow. Little yellow weeds that broke through the tarmac made him feel weepy. The moon, like some pale paper cutout in the morning sky, overwhelmed him.

SHORT FORM OF THE SERENITY PRAYER—FUCK IT.

P.S. Do no violence. Kill no one.

He wanted to tell them of the stars. Of the lovers in their hellish graves.

She reached for him, Cruz Chavez, the only man who had ever pressed his face against her and listened to her heart.

Progress might be inevitable, but there was no reason they should knuckle under without a fight.

Somewhere in that vast tapestry of interwoven odors, Angel was sure he could smell the dead. Not their bodies, but their souls. His newest theory was that the dead came as ghosts in sudden finger-thin wafts of perfume or cigarette or hair's sweet soap scents when it was drying in the sun…

Being American was like getting a good shellacking--whatever that meant. He'd heard it, and it sounded right for how he was feeling. These people did things all day long. They were frantic. They ate lunch in their cars and never had a siesta. They even went to church in their cars. Or on their TVs.

A life was a long struggle to come to terms with things and to keep some things from others.

There should be no such thing as an illegal person on this planet.

Later, she calculated that the dead men's flight alone had cost over sixty-eight thousand dollars. "What if," she asked, "somebody had simply invested that amount in their villages to begin with?

She had done as much as possible to create a stable, gloriously dull life for herself

The media only cares about the Yuma 14 because of the large numbers. But this tragedy goes on every day. It never stops. If only one person dies out there, it is exactly the same horror story.

God has worker's hands. Just remember—angels carry no harps. Angels carry hammers.

They still spoke a thousand languages—Spanish, too, to be sure, but also a thicket of songs and grammars. Mexico—the sound of wind in the ruins. Mexico—the waves rushing the shore. Mexico—the sand dunes, the snowfields, the steam of sleeping Popocatépetl