The Last Cuentista Quotes
"Children are not meant to be separated from their parents."
"You need to discover who you are and be that."
"You can't ruin them. They’ve traveled hundreds of years, and through many people to find you. Now, go make them your own."
"I don’t want to imagine them being so afraid they’d try to hide from something they can’t hide from."
"I’m here to serve and obey the Collective."
"Differences make things beautiful as a whole."
"I promise you, little one, you’ll be fine. Be brave."
"My job is to keep you safe, so you can have the best life possible."
"They don’t let me do the things I want to do."
"She’s always steering me toward botany instead of what I really love."
"When I was little and staying at Lita’s house, any time there was a thunderstorm or I had a nightmare, I would crawl into her warm bed and she’d tell me a story to calm me."
"En los tiempos viejos, there were two warring lands. One king had a daughter, Iztaccíhuatl, the white lady, who wore a long white dress and a red flower of the tulipan tree in her raven hair."
"When Itza’s father sent Popoca off to war, the evil priest, plotting for his own son to wed Izta, lied and told Izta that Popoca had died in a fierce battle."
"While Izta slept, Popoca carried her to the top of a snowy mountain. He created them each a mound and lit a torch."
"And to this day, they rest next to each other, waiting until the earth is peaceful so they can awaken and marry. Esto es verdad, y no miento. Como me lo contaron, lo cuento."
"You must always remember the story of the fox and crow. It is good to trust others. But there are some, like the fox, who will make promises to gain your trust."
"‘Pobre Crow,’ Fox said. ‘You seem to have demasiado queso to carry. Perhaps if you dropped some of your cheese, your load would not weigh so much.’"
"‘And with that, Crow dropped his cheese, and Fox gobbled it up. Y se acabó lo que se daba.’"
"Today we celebrate our arrival to the new planet. What happened to the former world was not a tragedy. It was an opportunity to leave our past behind."
"We are a single unit now, without past vices. We will no longer need to create a new history, for there is no past."
"‘La que no se arriesga no cruza la mar.’"
"One is useful to the Collective, or one is not."
"No one makes eye contact as he passes, like nothing at all has happened."
"Today has to be a scouting mission for when we all can really run."
"The last thing I need is them searching this area when we finally escape."
"Once decontaminated, we’re sent back toward our room, passing the rations room holding exactly what I need."
"I’m having a hard time keeping the huge grin off my face."
"I sit on the floor and face our honeycomb."
"I’m about to crawl into my cell when a body with long black hair sits up inside my hexagon."
"My only choice is to find my belongings."
"The same golden light falls over the jungle and lake."
"I can’t help smiling at hints of their personalities the Collective couldn’t erase."
"I’m sorry, but I can’t let you sneak in here anymore."
"She roams the earth with pointed teeth and glowing eyes, looking for her children. If she finds a child awake, she will mistake them for her own and take them!"
"Love, humor, pain, magic, lost souls—all woven to create stories most cultures might sugarcoat."
"The stories we tell ourselves make us who we are."
"Books became our language. Books became our home. Books became our lives."
"We weren’t perfect, but we still had hope we’d make it across the universe and make our ancestors proud."
"The panic on his face is there for the same reason he wanted the stories so badly. Each story, each person is different. Messy sometimes. But colorful, mismatched, and beautiful."
"What the Collective doesn’t understand is by honoring the past, our ancestors, our cultures—and remembering our mistakes—we become better."
"If I have already been reprogrammed and this is where my mind has ended up, it’s heaven."
"We’ve been across the galaxy on different paths, but we’ve finally found each other again."
"I am not what my parents hoped I’d be. I am what Lita knew I was. I am a storyteller."