Behold The Dreamers Quotes
"He’d never been asked to wear a suit to a job interview."
"In fact, sir, I believe I work hard, and one day I will have a good life here."
"If not for his pride, he would have cried, but tears, of course, would have been useless."
"The silence in the apartment was like a celestial choir, the perfect background music to her study time."
"Life in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step."
"Everyone wants to come to America, sir. Everyone. To be in this country, sir. To live in this country. Ah! It is the greatest thing in the world, Mr. Edwards."
"You see it just as you are coming down the road on the way from Douala, after you pass Mile Four. Nobody can miss it above their heads."
"You have to go there one day, sir. In fact, sir, you really must go."
"He could not move. Not even his mind could move; the ability to create thoughts deserted him."
"She couldn’t summon a smile, sing a song, or string together two thoughts without the word 'deportation' finding its way in there."
"What she needed to do was start sleeping better, stop staying up all night dreading the most horrid things that had not yet happened."
"We’ll take it as it comes, Jende said to her every day, but she didn’t want to take it as it came. She wanted to be in control of her own life."
"This helplessness crushed her, the fact that she had traveled to America only to be reminded of how powerless she was."
"Six days after the news, her headache abated—not because her fears had diminished but because time has a way of abating these things."
"You go to school to sit quietly in class and open your ears like gongo leaf and listen to your teacher."
"Every time she came over, Cher ... No, I’m not kidding you ... Of course he still does it, right in front of me."
"I’ve always wanted kids. As soon as I’m done with school, my boyfriend and I, we really hope we can adopt."
"You may go to bring back fortune, You may go to escape misfortune, You may even go, just because you want to go, But when you come back, We hope you’ll come back, Home will still be here."
"No matter how bad it gets at work I know that at the end of the day I can send my parents on vacations to see the world, pay for every medical bill that comes up, make sure my sister doesn’t suffer because her husband’s dead, make sure my wife and sons have far more than what they need."
"Sometimes it’s better to be far away from the center of the madness."
"I need to get my mind off myself for a little bit. It’s just been awful."
"You’re a grown woman. There’s no need to lie. I know you saw everything on the nightstand, and you didn’t think I was just napping. You’re smart enough to put two and two together."
"You don’t only do what makes you happy. You think about your parents, too."
"I want you to know where I came from and why I fight hard every day to remain here. To keep my family together. To have all this."
"I’m not asking you to stay in law school and become a lawyer so you can be like me. I’m asking you because I know what it takes to be successful in this country."
"I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. You know I can’t!"
"I’ve tried to understand this anger … I can’t. What does he have against being wealthy? Why should good hardworking people feel bad about their money just because other people don’t have as much money?"
"That's the danger of dealing with workaholics. It’s hard to trust them."
"Welcome to my life, or whatever’s left of it."
"It's scary, but Anna's not going anywhere, no matter how bad it gets."
"It's the fear that kills us. Sometimes it happens and it is not even as bad as the fear."
"You spend months losing sleep, fearing for what's ahead. At least now it's happened and it's over."
"Men are ruled by a thing they cannot control."
"If I ever want to try something new, I'll find me a nice old white man with lots of money and an oxygen tank."
"Women have to learn to be more trusting. They have to trust their husbands that they know what they're doing."
"I don't want to know all of a man's business."
"You think tomorrow you lose your job, she'll remember your name?"
"If you don't give her what she wants, she'll go to him and make up a story about you so that he'll do away with you."
"You work for the whole family, not just him."
"They want me to clean up some things before I leave. Otherwise, I don't need to be here for one more minute."
"I'm going to enjoy myself in Sarasota, and when I come back, I'll dust off the old résumé."
"Sometimes all a person needs to feel better is a really good cry."
"The true measure of whether somebody really loves you is what they do for you with their hands and say to you with their mouth and think of you in their heart."
"Even when things are bad, think of only good things."
"You have to stop comparing prices like that, you’ll never buy anything in America."
"The best thing to do in this country, whenever you enter a store, is to ignore the exchange rate, ignore the advertisements, ignore what everyone else is eating and drinking and talking about these days, and buy only the things you need."
"One of my duties as associate dean of students is to offer our students career counseling. And my aim when I counsel students like you, Ms. Jonga, is to guide them toward achievable goals."
"I want to become a pharmacist! And I will become a pharmacist."
"The day this our special girl becomes a pharmacist, I will take everyone to a place called the Four Seasons."
"Papa, oh, Papa, he cried, how could you not give me one last chance to see you again?"
"No grown man should be made to tell anyone that he couldn't go home to bury his father."
"I am holding on tightly to my savings so that I’ll be ready for the day when worse comes to worst."
"Having papers in this country is not everything."
"America, to her, was synonymous with happiness."
"Marriage is a thing you want. But when you gonna get it, it bring you all the thing you no want."
"No one can fault you for wanting what every mother wants."
"But food, Winston said, would always be needed."
"In Limbe, it would no longer be so. The loose young women there would be eager to pounce on him."
"She worried that she might have too little in common with her friends, being that she was now so different from them."
"They would live near doting grandparents and too many uncles and aunts and cousins."
"There was a certain kind of pleasure, a certain type of adventurous and audacious childhood, that only New York City could offer a child."
"Treating our friends in need of help the way we treat our enemies. Forgetting that we could find ourselves in search of a home someday, too."
"No condition is permanent, Mr. Edwards. Good times must come to an end, just like bad times, whether we want it or not."
"The truth, sir, is that my body may still be here, but my heart has already gone back home."
"I am no longer afraid of my country the way I used to be."