Quotes from Ana Castillo

I tried to understand how in every journey a man or woman was both hero and anti-hero at varying times. Years

But what had really happened, unfortunately, as ideal as it started out to be, was not that they had succeeded in becoming one, but that they had become neither.

We said nothing for several minutes. Our minds weighed like ripened fruit on the branch. When one is confronted by the mirror, the spirit trembles.

Mexico. Melancholy, profoundly right and wrong, it embraces as it strangulates

i too suffer from dreams.

You are a ghost, like you were a ghost before because you were never here, but everywhere at once, i wish i could talk like my eyes can see, word you with what i smell, knock your socks off with aromas of a tiny metropolis tourists only catch glimpses of at the Wharf. A thousand LSD trips and middle-aged folks remembering Timothy Leary playing like a Pied Piper leading them all off to jump off the pier.

No, it's too much. I should never have let you know that I was here. After all, there was no reason to tell you. It was just that we landed and I was sucked up by the tentacles of this, your city, and your name and that summer that were all inseparable and I called as soon as I put my bag down on the bed in this room.

In what neighborhood—town or city, rural area or village in the country—could I raise a brown boy and believe that no harm could ever come to him, where

When I was a teenager, we used to cross over to Juárez every weekend. J-Town always had a reputation as a good place to party. It still does. Hey, it's the birthplace of the famous margarita cocktail. Back then, Spanish rock was just starting up and they had some good live bands there on weekends. A carload of us would go drinking and carousing. The worst that would happen was the cops would stop us because we were kids and all hammered.

I've spent my whole life in Chicago being asked where am I from, so that I have a sense of displacement that also is very psychologically disorienting.

I'm concerned about a lot of serious border issues. This book is about the border reality and the struggles of the undocumented worker.

I wanted everything. What could you not want when you are brown and Indian-looking in a society in which the white aesthetic is praised as acceptable?

Poverty has its advantages. When you're that poor what would you have that anyone would want? Except your peace of mind. Your dignity. Your heart. The important things.

I was just, like, not at all the office type; I was the artist type.

For things to have value in man's world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man's oldest and most constant commodity is woman.

To all the women and the men who ever loved me just a little.

Human sexuality has been regulated and shaped by men to serve men's needs.

The man you love cooking for you is good for you too.

I'm obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I'm not looked at as an American.

Our goal should be to achieve joy