Quotes from Cristina Henriquez

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

I mean, does anyone ever talk about why people are crossing? I can promise you it's not with some grand ambition to come here and ruin everything for the gringo chingaos. People are desperate, man.

I just sat there, because something about that idea—that you could be one person in one moment and then wake up and be completely different—punched me in the gut.

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.

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

Con el pésame más profundo y las bendiciones de Dios por la pérdida de alguien tan querido

Ya. ¡Basta, Celia!

But it was only a word- justice. It was only a concept, and it wasn't enough.

Maybe it was denial, but maybe it was her only way of holding on to someone she had loved. Maybe we should all be so passionate.

Él es tan rabioso.

the media, you'll learn that we're all gangbangers, we're all drug dealers, we're tossing bodies in vats of acid, we want to destroy America, we still think Texas belongs to us, we all have swine flu, we carry machine guns under our coats, we don't pay any taxes, we're lazy, we're stupid, we're all wetbacks who crossed the border illegally. I swear to God, I'm so tired of being called a spic, a nethead, a cholo, all this stuff.

And then there are a lot of people who come here because they actually want to try to do something good in this country. In my case, I was working at a newspaper in Sinaloa for years, trying to report on the drug war, trying to make people there aware of what was happening in their own backyard, but my bosses only had an appetite for the macabre. They kept sending me out to take photos of crime scenes that they'd plaster

Dios sabe lo que hace.

I took his razor from the shower floor, bits of his black hair still caked between the blades. I took his toothbrush from the sink counter and sucked on the bristles, trying to find the taste of him, but there was only the flavor of watery mint toothpaste....I pulled the sheets off the bed with the idea that I could gather up the imprint of him and save it. I thought, I can unfurl the sheets on our old bed at home. I can lie in the creases formed by his body. I can sleep with him again.

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? It

We knew from the outset and in a terribly selfish way that our interest lay only in each other.

I had learned by then that Maribel liked to think of herself as a rebel. And yet she managed only small insurrections.

Pátzcuaro and in the shops that catered to them, and we couldn't read the signs above the storefronts as we passed them, so we peered in every window along the way to see what was inside.

At the diner, customers used to come in all the time and say, 'I'm not a morning person.' Usually right before or right after they ordered coffee. But what? The world is divided into morning people and afternoon people and night people?

All we wanted was the simplest things: to eat good food, to sleep at night, to smile, to laugh, to be well.

Profesora Shields explained that in English there was no usted, no tu. There was only one word—you. It applied to all people. Everyone equal. No one higher or lower than anyone else. No one more distant or more familiar. You. They. Me. I. Us. We. There were no words that changed from feminine to masculine and back again depending on the speaker. A person was from New York. Not a woman from New York, not a man from New York. Simply a person.

Who could think that a person's entire being is housed in a finger or in a hip bone or in a small piece of a skull, and that the rest of the body exists for appearances only?

I kissed her again and again and again, greedily, like I was making up for the time I'd lost, like I was making up for all the times I might not get to kiss her again once our parents found out what we'd done, like I was making up for my whole life when I hadn't known her, which seemed unbelievable and like a crime.

I don't need anyone's pity. My life has been what it has been. It's not a wonderful story, but it's mine.