How The García Girls Lost Their Accents Quotes
"The old aunts lounge in the white wicker armchairs, flipping open their fans, snapping them shut."
"Except that more of them are dressed in the greys and blacks of widowhood, the aunts seem little changed."
"Before anyone has turned to greet her in the entryway, Yolanda sees herself as they will, shabby in a black cotton skirt and jersey top."
"The gesture of pleading, the caption had read."
"You look terrible," Lucinda says. "Too thin, and the hair needs a cut. Nothing personal."
"The help! Every day worse," Tía Flor confides to Yolanda.
"A woman just doesn’t travel alone in this country. Especially these days."
"Don’t listen to them," Gabriela waves her hand as if scaring off an annoying fly.
"There’s talk, you know, of guerrillas in the mountains."
"She’ll be fine," Gabriela speaks with calm authority.
"You have no right, no right at all, to go through my stuff or read my mail!"
"The help is always there when you need it most."
"In my campo we say a person has an antojo when they are taken over by un santo who wants something."
"We’re going to have to really spoil her this time so she doesn’t stay away so long again."
"Once a male cousin bragged that this pre-dinner hour should be called Whore Hour."
"The cake is on its own table, the little cousins clustered around it, arguing over who will get what slice."
"We were really really poor, words can’t describe it."
"Every last article of clothing," she adds coyly.
"What does this mean? Where does it get those gringas?"
"I have, I have, and the problem isn't I can't find anything to worry about but that I find so much."
"It's just scary not to know what the most important word in my vocabulary means!"
"With patience and calm, even a burro can climb a palm."
"Point, point, does everything need a point? Why do you write poems?"
"Remember how Mister Lincoln couldn’t think of anything to say at the Gettysburg, but then, bang! Four score and once upon a time ago."
"Maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, there’s something they’ve missed that’s important."
"You’re never going to make money. The Americans have already thought of everything, you know that."
"What do you wish for on the first celebration of the day you lost everything?"
"No child of hers was going to forget her family name and think she was nothing but a kissing cousin to an orangutan."
"He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher."
"You must pardon him. Always it is better to let bygones be forgotten, no?"
"Better an independent nobody than a high-class house slave."
"These Latin women, even when the bullets are flying and the bombs are falling, they want to make sure you have a full stomach, your shirt is ironed, your handkerchief is fresh."
"Thought you might be SIM," Mundo says, explaining his withdrawn gun.
"The doctor, we have come to ask him a few questions, but he seems to have disappeared."
"No flies fly into a closed mouth," she explains when Carla asks, "Why can't we tell?"
"Dream on," Chucha said. And now she was laughing.
"We were hiding," I piped up in his defense, having had moments to collect my thoughts.
"Every night I pray," Gladys said, nodding towards the bureau.
"It’s a pity there’s no national ballet for the girls."
"Mami seemed not to mind the singing anymore."
"The next morning the baby doll was under the tree."
"The room was a treasure cave of gift-wrapped boxes."
"Their faces lit up: a wallet with a pretty lip of green in the billfold!"
"I saw now my new doll, now my puzzle or coloring book loom larger than life in my vision."
"The door flew open, and Gladys, sobbing into her upraised skirt, scurried down the hall."
"She’ll get a job in no time. Maybe even end up in New York."
"The coin dropped with a clink to the bank below."
"I stood at the end of the shaft of light, and then one toe braved the darkness."