43 Quotes by Cristina Henriquez

My dad is from Panama; he came to the U.S. in 1971. He came to study chemical engineering at the University of Delaware. He thought he would go back, and then he met my mom here. I was born and mostly raised in Delaware.

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?

Finding is for things that are lost. You don’t need to find me, Mayor.

Maybe it’s the instinct of every immigrant, born of necessity or of longing: Someplace else will be better than here. And the condition: if only I can get to that place.

Sleep was like wealth, elusive and for other people.

We left a lot of things behind – not only physical objects, but our friends and of course our families, pieces of ourselves – all for the chance to see that light in Maribel’s eyes. It’s been difficult, yes, but I would do it all again. People do what they have to do in this life. We try to get from one end of it to the other with dignity and with honor. We do the best we can.

When someone dies, it doesn’t leave a hole, and that’s the agony.

We would be thousands of miles apart from now on and we would go on with our lives and get older and change and grow, but we would never have to look for each other. Inside each of us, I was pretty sure, was a place for the other. Nothing that had happened and nothing that would ever happen would make that less true.

Life got its tentacles around you, its hooks into your heart, and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time, and you are standing in a part of the town where the air is sweet – your face flushed, your chest thumping, your stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a separate planet, all of it of a piece though the pieces turn separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows you apart in her arms.