Quotes from Cristina Henriquez

My dad is from Panama; he came to the U.S. in 1971. He came to study chemical engineering at the University of Delaware. He thought he would go back, and then he met my mom here. I was born and mostly raised in Delaware.

I used to say, read as much as you can. Now I say, read the best that you can, the stories that resonate with you, the books that are important to you. Try to read, not only as a reader, but also as a writer, to deconstruct how the author is telling his or her story.

I teach a lot of graduate creative writing classes, and on the first day, I like to go around the room and ask everybody what's the last book you've read that you really loved. And all of the women tend to give me chick lit titles. And to me, that's sort of disappointing because it's their only exposure to fiction somehow.

My mom is a translator for the school district in Delaware. She'd hear these different stories from working with families there. Those stories stuck with me.

Often, when people ask me what I read as a young girl, I lie. Or, I should say, I lie by omission. I tell them about my brilliant fourth-grade teacher, Miss Artis, who assigned us 'Johnny Tremain' and 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and 'Tuck Everlasting,' all books that made an impression on me. And people nod in approval.

I didn't know until high school that I was interested in writing in any real way. But there was this boy that I had a crush on, and I used to tell him all the time what I felt about him. Finally he gave me a blank journal and said to write it all down - and it didn't take me very long to realize how much I loved writing.

I do think all things in moderation. I mean, the thing to me - it actually doesn't bother me very much if people want to read chick lit. But it makes me, you know, sort of disheartened when that's all that people want to read.

Certainly, I read a lot and follow the news. But as a writer, I am not interested in a political story. I am searching for the humanity of the characters. I never set out to write a book about an 'issue.'

The characters were not unknown because they were illegal or didn't have the documents but because people didn't want to know them.

We're the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they've been told they're supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we're not that bad, maybe even that we're a lot like them. And who would they hate then?

I felt the way I often felt in this country - simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, like an oddity whom everyone noticed but chose to ignore

Because a place can do many things against you, and if it's your home or if it was your home at one time, you still love it. That's how it works.

Maybe it's the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing: Someplace else will be better than here. And the condition: if only I can get to that place.

Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people.

The truth was that I didn't know which I was. I wasn't allowed to claim the thing I felt and I didn't feel the thing I was supposed to claim.

You can come back one day. Or I could come there. Maybe. I could find you. Finding is for the things that are lost. You don't need to find me, Mayor.

What if God wants us to be happy? What if there's nothing else around the bend? What if all our unhappiness is in the past and from here on out we get an uncomplicated life? Some people get that, you know. Why shouldn't it be us?

I know some people here think we're trying to take over, but we just want to be a part of it. We want to have our stake. This is our home, too.

What I didn't understand—what I suddenly realized now—was that if I stopped moving backwards, trying to recapture the past, there might be a future waiting for me, waiting for us, a future that would reveal itself if only I turned around and looked, and that once I did, I could start to move toward it.

We stood side by side and looked out at the vastness, the possibility of everything out there. Within the universe, I felt like a speck, but within myself I felt gigantic, the salt air filling my lungs, the roaring of the waves rushing in my ears.

And then again, maybe people and things are the same as emotions: Even when you can't see them or feel them or be with them, and even when they have died and even before they are born, they still exist somewhere. Far away or close, they're always somewhere. Maybe nothing in the world is truly lost, I think.

I didn't want to accept that in order to move forward, I had to walk through it. It was so much easier just to believe there was another path I could take around it and that at the end of that path would be the destination I wanted. It would be easier to want to end up at a lie, instead of the truth.

People do what they have to in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

Americans can handle one person from anywhere. They had Desi Arnaz from Cuba. And Tin Tan from México. And Rita Moreno from Puerto Rico. But as soon as there are too many of us, they throw up their hands. No, no, no! We were only just curious. We are not actually interested in you people.